Original Story: cnbc.com
A Montefiore Medical Center employee and seven others were indicted on Friday on charges of stealing the personal information of as many as 12,000 hospital patients and using it to make purchases at luxury stores, the Manhattan district attorney said. A Newark criminal lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
Officials said Monique Walker, 32, an assistant clerk at the hospital, allegedly stole personal information, including names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, from thousands of patients. She printed patients’ records on a near daily basis between 2012 and 2013, the authorities said, and then sold them to one of her co-defendants for as little as $3 each.
“In case after case, we’ve seen how theft by a single company insider, who is often working with identity thieves on the outside, can rapidly victimize a business and thousands of its customers,” the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement. A Greenville criminal lawyer represents clients in criminal cases involving fraud, theft, and burglary.
“Motivated by greed, profit and a complete disregard for their victims, identity thieves often feed stolen information to larger criminal operations, which then go on to defraud additional businesses and victims.”
The authorities said that Ms. Walker's co-defendants used stolen information she provided to go on shopping sprees in Manhattan, making purchases at stores that included Barneys New York, Macy's, Victoria's Secret, Bergdorf Goodman and Lord & Taylor. The purchases were worth at least $50,000, prosecutors said, and were made with store credit and gift cards.
Ms. Walker and the others were indicted on charges that included grand larceny, identity theft and criminal possession of a forged instrument.
According to the indictment, Fernando Salazar, 28, was the ring leader of the identity theft operation, buying the information from Ms. Walker and supplying it to the others.
Susan Green-Lorenzen, a senior vice president at Montefiore, said the hospital was cooperating fully with law enforcement and that it would "not tolerate any violation of our patients' privacy."
"At Montefiore all employees are thoroughly screened for criminal backgrounds, provided extensive training to protect patient privacy, and must adhere to a strict code of conduct," Ms. Green-Lorenzen added. "The employee who was arrested in connection to this violation egregiously and criminally chose to violate established hospital policies, the trust of our patients and the law." A Salt Lake City criminal lawyer is following this story closely.
Lisa McKenzie, a spokeswoman for Montefiore, said the hospital had identified all 12,000 patients whose personal information had been compromised and was notifying them of the breach by mail on Friday.
No Montefiore employees were affected by the breach, she said.
The hospital will also provide affected patients with various identity protection measures, Ms. McKenzie said, including one year of credit monitoring, a $1 million insurance policy and identity recovery services if their identity was compromised.
Personal information from 12,000 people was used in shopping sprees, officials say.
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