Posted on 10/12/2013 6:01:32 AM PDT by csvset
NORFOLK
Two former Sentara Healthcare nurse's aides improperly accessed the personal information of about 3,700 patients as part of an elaborate identity theft scheme that netted more than $116,000, according to hospital officials.
Sentara Healthcare's chief privacy officer, Greg Burkhart, announced the scope of the data breach Friday after the second of the two men pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to defraud the government.
Although court documents indicate fewer than 250 people fell victim to the scheme, Burkhart said federal investigators have forwarded to the hospital evidence the two men had information on thousands of patients.
"We are in the process of implementing protocols that will help identify this sort of behavior in the future, before any harm can come to our patients," Burkhart said.
The company plans to mail letters next week to everyone whose information was accessed. All will receive one-year subscriptions to a credit-monitoring service, Burkhart said.
Festus Ighalo, 36, of Virginia Beach and Emmanuel Effiong, 35, of Dallas pleaded guilty this week to their roles in the conspiracy, which involved the filing of fraudulent tax returns.
The scheme stretched from about September 2011 through April 2013. Court documents don't specify where Ighalo and Effiong worked, but Burkhart said the victims were "almost exclusively" patients at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital.
Most of them were patients between mid-September 2012 and mid-February 2013, a hospital spokesman said.
According to court documents, Ighalo and Effiong would take the patient's names, birth dates and Social Security numbers and give them to other people. Those accomplices, not identified in the indictment, would file false income tax returns and collect refunds.
Thirty-eight of the 77 tax returns linked to the scheme involved taxpayers with addresses in eastern Virginia, documents said. The returns sought $401,074 in fraudulent refunds, documents said. The IRS paid $116,404.
Nigerians?
Hezbollah? Criminal illegals?
Who cares?
> $116,000. They did all that theft for a lousy $116,000.
I always thought that if I were to be a thief I would make it worth my while and steal a cool billion. Why not, the punishment for $116,000 and a billion is the same...grand theft.
You could never do it as a nurses aide. For that amount you’d have to be a politican.../s
Yeah, I hear you, go big. Curious to see how much prison time they’ll get. “ White collar” crime gets a mild slap on the wrist.
Nigerian princes! They are just financing themselve until they come into their vast inheritances. It happens all the time.
Obunga Healthcare operatives?
Future 0bamacare navigators.
Can’t blame the one guy....if I had a name like
Festus Ighalo
I’d be looking for a new identity as well as selling them.
Goodness...can you imagine what his parents must have looked like to think that was a great name for their kid?
Probably Philipinos
That was my first thought as well but those last names brought up nothing but Nigerians.
Lol. Good one.
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