Elaine Silvestrini reports:
Thousands of local homeowners who relied on a national alarm business to protect their homes from intruders became victims of identity theft perpetrated by at least one employee of another company that sold them the security system, police say.
“I went to them for security and I felt violated,” said Marilyn Varriale, 60, of Gibsonton, whose information was stolen, Tampa police say, after she bought an ADT home security system through Tampa Signal in February. “Obviously I gave them my Social Security number, and it ended up being turned against me.”
Varriale and other victims’ personal information, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth, were sold to people who filed fraudulent tax returns, according to police who are investigating an explosion of tax fraud that they estimate has bilked federal taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars in the Tampa area alone.
Read more on Tampa Bay Online. Silvestrini also notes two other incidents of identity theft/fraud in Florida:
Suspects in tax fraud also have been found with Department of Veterans Affairs medical records.
“People that try and steal from vets or retired people deserve to go to jail,” said Russell Pascoe, 63, of Port Richey, who is a disabled Marine veteran of Vietnam. Pascoe’s records were among the veterans’ medical records discovered by authorities in May in a room at a Motel 6 on Fowler Avenue where they believe drug suspects were filing fraudulent tax returns.
Thieves even were able to steal personal information from a website for a local government, said Tampa police Sgt. Terry Goff, who is overseeing the police department’s tax fraud investigation and would not identify which government’s website was compromised. “These people (were) able to get on the website in two minutes and start pulling up database of citizens,” Goff said.
When police told officials with the local government, Goff said, “At first they said, ‘That’s absolutely impossible,’ and then we showed them.” Goff said the officials then fixed the hole in the system.
I wonder whether we’ll ever find out about most of the breaches law enforcement is uncovering or if they will be kept quiet. Just studying one area like Tampa to get a sense of the scope and nature of the problem would be instructive.