Today’s news has so many articles concerning identity theft that it is hard to narrow down which ones to bring to our readers. The following information was released by MercuryNews.com:

Kaiser Permanente has had a security data breach that affects almost 30,000 employees in northern California. The unfortunate part of this story is that a small number of these employees have already reported being victims of identity theft as a result.

This breach only affects employees and not members. The information stolen was enough to cause significant damage. It includes names, addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers.

Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Gay Westfall has stated: “We immediately launched an internal investigation and are working to determine the source of this breach, and we are working closely with law enforcement in their investigation.”

One year of free credit monitoring is being offered to help those affected. A toll free number for employees to call is: 877-281-3573.

“We regret that this unfortunate incident occurred,” Westfall said. “We are notifying each employee who may be affected by phone and letter to provide additional information.”

The data was found on the computer of Mia Garza, of San Ramon, California. Garza was arrested back on December 23, 2008, for suspicion of possession of stolen property and forgery. She is not a Kaiser employee and it is not known at this time how she obtained the information.  Garza was released on January 14 and is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing on February 19. She is facing felony charges involving stolen property, identity theft and forgery.

Identity theft is not new to Garza. She pleaded guilty to one count of identity theft back in August of 2007, as well as grand theft and second-degree burglary.

Employees of Kaiser are admonished to place a fraud alert on their credit and to look over recent copies of their credit reports.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Articles Concerning Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.