Identity Theft Expert Speaker; Health center workers used deceased patient info to apply for loans
Identity Theft Expert Speaker Robert Siciliano www.IDTheftSecurity.com discusses Health center workers used deceased patient info to apply for loans.
Medical identity theft means lots of things depending on how the person was victimized. Generally something needs to impact the person medical record. In other cases it may impact their health insurance. The thief may gain insurance money, drugs or medical procedures.
Below is a case that resulted in financial identity theft due to health care professionals having access to deceased clients records. The insidiousness of the crime victimizes the family members after their loved-one has departed. Leaving them to clean up the mess. In the case below the perps got greedy and were caught. If they werent so greedy they may have got away with it over an extended period of time.
This case represents a flawed system that relys on Social Security Numbers as identifiers and makes no effort to properly identify and authenticate the borrower.
Staff Writer
Friday, December 26, 2008
ENGLEWOOD — Two Samaritan North Health Center employees indicted on identity theft and money laundering charges used information from deceased patients to apply for online loans, police said Friday, Dec. 26.
Linda McDermott-Dorsey and Lisa Kidd, both of Trotwood, were indicted Dec. 23. McDermott-Dorsey is charged with 11 counts of money laundering and one count of identity theft, Kidd with 19 counts of money laundering and one of identity theft.
Englewood Police Sgt. Mike Lang said Samaritan North Health Center did an internal investigation and then called police, after being contacted by an on-line loan company the women are accused to trying to swindle.
“It was really a case of due diligence by the hospital and online companies monitoring suspicious transactions from the same location,” he said. “When we conducted our investigation, the families of the deceased were unaware that anything like this had happened.”
Lang said the women allegedly obtained a little more than $7,000 using information from 24 people over about a five week period, May-June 2007. They checked newspaper obituaries and used the hospital computer system to gather the personal information of deceased persons who had been Good Samaritan Hospital patients, Lang said.
The money laundering charges stem from online bank accounts opened and used to transfer funds. No court date has been set.
