James Call
The personal identifying information of more than 200,000 Floridians who had applied for public benefits may have been stolen and sold, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
A joint federal-state investigation has resulted in the arrest of a Cora Eutsay, who used her position at CareerSource South Florida in Opa-Locka to access the information and then sold the information of at least 200 individuals, according to an arrest warrant.
“Eutsay’s employment credentials were used on several occasions to run queries in the ACCESS Florida database for the PII of persons who had previously applied for public benefits,” U.S. Attorney Wilfredo A. Ferrer said.
Florida’s reputation as a home for flimflam artists date to bogus land deals in the 1920s which were lampooned by the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts.
A study released this month by the National Consumer League found the Sunshine State with the highest per capita rate of identity theft — 37,000 complaints in 2013.
“Data breaches regularly expose sensitive personal information about millions of Florida consumers on cyber-crime black markets,” said John Breyault, vice president of the Consumers League, when the study was released. “Without reforms in Washington to better protect consumers’ data, high identity-theft rates could become the ‘new normal’ for consumers in Florida and around the country.”
Eutsay was working a Department of Economic Opportunity job when authorities suspected criminal activity. DEO alerted the U.S. Department of Labor to the circumstances and cooperated with the investigation.
State law requires notification of all individuals whose PPI may have been inappropriately accessed. DEO said letters will be sent to about 200,000 people and public notice will be published in print and provided to broadcast media.
Information on how to combat identity theft, and advice for victims can be found here.
