In the justice system: A federal judge Jade Ingalls to 66 months in prison on charges of aggravated identity theft, bank fraud and other charges. Ingalls got caught by leaving a wallet in a store. When a store employee opened the wallet to find ID to notify the customer, the employee found at least five…
Author: Dissent
HIPAA security rule enforcement shifts to OCR
The secretary of HHS shifted enforcement of the HIPAA Security Rule from CMS to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), according to an HHS announcement published Tuesday in the Federal Register. Until now, OCR has enforced only the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which protects the privacy of patients’ health information and the confidentiality provisions of the…
NY man sentenced for credit card fraud
Owen Gibson, 43, of Brooklyn, New York, was sentenced Wednesday by United States District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Hartford to 21 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for using stolen credit cards to purchase goods from various retail locations. On August 13, 2008, Gibson pleaded guilty to one count of…
Former United Way employee wreaked havoc
Jeffery H. Sloman, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Michael J. Folmar, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced today the arrest of defendant Luis Robert Altamarino. According to the Indictment filed on August 4, 2009, Altamarino was a former employee of United Way of Miami-Dade (“UWMD”)….
Clinic employee sentenced for ID theft
Bill Mercer, United States Attorney for the District of Montana, announced Monday that during a federal court session in Missoula, on July 31, 2009, before U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy, Andrea Mackowiak, a 33-year-old resident of Columbia Falls, was sentenced to a term of prison for 24 months. She was also ordered to pay…
Employee violated HIPAA but got job back
A Wisconsin hospital employee fired for accessing the medical records of her estranged son so she could find him has been reinstated after an arbitrator called her punishment excessive. The 30-year veteran of St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee was fired after an investigation found she repeatedly accessed her son’s records in violation of federal privacy…