Guillermo Contreras reports: Credit-card numbers from 17,000 guests at the Emily Morgan Hotel were stolen and used in a three-state shopping spree to buy farm and ranch equipment, tires, machinery, all-terrain vehicles and other goods, federal officials say. Prosecutors unsealed indictments Thursday against five people in what officials say is the largest identify-theft case ever…
Category: U.S.
WI: Village of Big Bend Employees Have Payroll Info Stolen
Employees of a Waukesha County village are worried about identity theft, after their payroll information was stolen. Big Bend Village Clerk Bobbi Wopper says the company that processes the village’s payroll had a laptop stolen from a car in Milwaukee last week. And police have not recovered that computer. She did not say who the…
Investor, TJX settle suit over data theft
Hiawatha Bray reports: TJX Cos., which owns the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls discount retail chains, has settled an investor lawsuit related to the theft of millions of its customers’ credit card numbers. The Louisiana Municipal Police Employees’ Retirement System, which holds shares of TJX stock, alleged that members of the TJX board of directors failed…
(follow-up) Private info accidentally released
Fran Handy reports that after the Sparta School District in New Jersey erroneously sent out the unredacted version of a spread sheet containing vendors’ SSN and other information — instead of the redacted one that they had prepared in response to an open records request — the District has had some trouble getting the data…
(follow-up) Former FDIC Employee Fined for Leaking Financial Data
Merikay Wootton, 63, Lenexa, Kan., has been sentenced to 24 months probation and fined $3,600 for disclosing confidential information while she was an employee of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Wootton pleaded guilty to unlawfully disclosing confidential information from a government agency. In her plea, she admitted she was working as a loan officer for…
Hospital Explains its Breach Decisions
Joseph Goedert reports: Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in Bronx, N.Y., recently notified 130,495 patients of a breach of their protected health information after seven CDs a business associate FedEx’d were lost (see story). In a statement to Health Data Management, the hospital, part of NYC Health and Hospitals Corp., explains why the data…