A federal grand jury has returned a 14-count superseding indictment charging Mento Nnana Kaluanya with health care fraud and aggravated identity theft arising from a $3.9 million health care fraud scheme, United States Attorney Tim Johnson and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced today. Kaluanya, 50, a Texas resident born in the Federal Republic of…
Author: Dissent
The state of data security – or lack thereof – in NY school districts
Yesterday, I posted an item about a Lindenhurst school district audit that indicated that a school district’s funds had been illegally transferred back in 2007 and that the district had not detected the problem. Last month, a similar situation occurred with the Duanesburg School District, also in New York. Dee Alpert, publisher of The Special…
Swiss Data Affair Could Pay Off Handsomely for Germany
The extent of tax evasion by a number of German citizens with Swiss bank accounts appears to be far wider than originally thought. As the German government prepares to fork out a considerable sum for a CD with information about Germans suspected of dodging taxes, a newspaper reports that tax authorities could recover up to…
Heartland Payment Systems and Visa Inc. Announce Acceptance Rate of Over 97 Percent for Data Security Breach Settlement Agreement
From the press release: Financial institutions representing more than 97 percent of eligible Visa-branded credit and debit cards have accepted the Alternative Recovery Offers they received pursuant to the settlement entered into by Visa Inc. (NYSE:V), Heartland Payment Systems® (NYSE: HPY) and Heartland’s sponsoring acquirers last month. This level of acceptance fulfills the 80 percent…
TX: Woman sentenced to 34 years over Irving ISD ID theft
As a follow-up to a case previously covered on this site where Irving ISD employees became victims of ID theft after paper records with their personal information was tossed out, unshredded, the Associated Press now reports that Sharon Denise Seeley pleaded guilty and was sentenced for her role in the scam. Seeley was sentenced to…
Balancing hospital security ‘tricky’
John Andrews writes: Data security is a multi-dimensional job full of variables that sometimes aren’t noticed until it’s too late. And often these unforeseen breaches are completely accidental, caused by an unsuspecting user. For the most part, hospitals have sufficiently guarded their systems against threats from malevolent attackers on the outside. But while sophisticated firewall…