Karen Velie reports: In the age of rampant identity theft, San Luis Obispo County officials, in a recent mailing to Estate Financial Inc. (EFI) victims, deliberately placed some investor bank account numbers on the outside of envelopes they mailed to the victims through their financial institutions. “My bank called me and said that they had…
Category: U.S.
Data breach could affect 60,000 GIs, civilians
Jim Tice reports: The Corps of Engineers is investigating the recent loss of an external hard drive that could pose identify theft problems for as many as 60,000 soldiers and Army civilians. Maj. Mark Young, a Corps of Engineers spokesman in Washington, said the security breach occurred in the command’s Southwestern Division, which is headquartered…
IN: Boxes of medical files found abandoned
Tom Moor reports: An agent with the Indiana attorney general’s office removed 21 boxes of medical records from a downtown office building Friday that contain the personal information of hundreds of local people. The boxes, consisting of thousands of sheets of paper, contain patients’ Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, diagnoses and prescriptions. […] Although…
WA: Renton man sentenced to 5-year prison term on ID theft
Levi Pulkkinen reports: A 37-year-old Renton man accused of stealing hundreds of identities and credit cards was sentenced to a five-year prison term Friday in U.S. District Court. According to a statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle, Billy Morris Britt took part in an ID theft ring that targeted 23 different financial…
Press Copy to have your Identity Stolen
Melissa Yeager of WINK News follows up on their investigation where they purchased used hard drives on eBay only to discover that they contained personal information such as bank accounts, credit cards, social security numbers, even pharmacy prescriptions. The news team tracked some of the data back to Sears and Giant Foods of Maryland, who…
Follow-up: Settlement OK’d in DA Davidson hacker lawsuit, extortionists indicted
In January 2008, Davidson Companies, a Great Falls-based investment company, revealed that a hacker had broken into a database in 2007 and obtained the names and Social Security numbers of some 226,000 Davidson clients. A lawsuit filed against the company in April was re-filed in May of 2008. Now the lawsuit has settled and there…