Maura Lerner of the Star Tribune reports: In February, staffers at Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis packed up about 1,200 patient records for shipping to a new office across town. Unfortunately, no one at Fairview has seen the box since. This week, officials began notifying patients that their health and billing records — including names,…
Author: Dissent
Identity theft hits doctor’s office, banks
Guillermo Contreras reports: A San Antonio man pleaded guilty this week to possessing numerous medical files stolen from an area doctor, while a local woman was indicted separately for using stolen identifying information in a bank fraud scam. Douglas Allen Ewert, 28, entered the guilty plea Tuesday to fraud related to stolen identification documents after…
IRS Hit With Massive Theft Of Nonprofits’ Identities
William P. Barrett writes: Someone has hijacked the tax identity of more than 2,300 tiny or defunct nonprofits, apparently taking advantage of a hole in a new electronic Internal Revenue Service filing system to list the same person as a charitable official at the same mail box drop in Las Vegas. The charities, most of…
Aussie data breaches doubled in 2011
Darren Pauli reports: The number of Australian data breaches reported to forensic investigators has already doubled those experienced in 2010, even though it’s only April. Some of the worst breaches have cost businesses many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and involved significant loss of credit card information and customer information. Yet it seems that none…
PA: Two Romanians arrested in skimmer scheme
One resident of Pompano Beach, Fla., and one resident of Astoria, N.Y., have been arrested following an indictment by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on charges of conspiracy, access device fraud and attempt to commit access device fraud, United States Attorney David J. Hickton announced today. The four-count indictment, returned on March 29, 2011,…
TX: Identity theft hits doctor's office, banks
Guillermo Contreras reports: A San Antonio man pleaded guilty this week to possessing numerous medical files stolen from an area doctor, while a local woman was indicted separately for using stolen identifying information in a bank fraud scam. Douglas Allen Ewert, 28, entered the guilty plea Tuesday to fraud related to stolen identification documents after…