Springfield Loan and Finance needs a new shredder. How do we know this? Because when it came time to shred their customers' personal information their shredder broke. At least this is what a company spokesman claim. Then instead of taking care of the problem the simply dumped the records into the trash. They were discovered and reported to KY3.

To help prevent this every business should document the shredding and have it supervised by a manager. This prevents employees from getting lazy and just dumping it in the trash. An alternative is to hire a shredding service who will make it easy to comply with your document destruction program and provide you with a certificate of destruction. But the bonus is it is cheaper than replacing shredders all the time.

The North Carolina Attorney General is investigating Prompt Med, formerly known as Battleground Urgent Care for throwing medical records in the trash. The fine for such an offense is up to $5,000 per instance. At 600 medical files that can be up to $3 million.

It is amazing that any medical practice would gamble $3 million to save $100 on shredding.

On the weekend of weekend of January 16 the Metlife office in Rockford, Illinois moved to a new location. This wouldn't make the news but in the process they left dumpsters full of their customers private information. The documents were discovered by an out of work machinist looking to collect recyclables. He notified the news and police to the problem. Michael McRaith, director of the Illinois Department of Insurance, and MetLife are investigating the incident [article].

When you are planning an office move don't forget to line up a shredding service. It is a great time to implement a document retention plan. Plus, why pay to move boxes of documents you don't even need.

As the nation debates Health care reform one way to cut costs is to eliminate waste. One source is through medical identity theft. This breaks down into five basic types:

1. Friends and Family. An insured person gives his insurance card to an un-insured friend or relative to get medical treatment.Stolen information.
   
2. An un-insured person steals a card to get treatment.
3. Insurance fraud. An employee at a medical practice processes fictitious claims.
4. Drug addicts. Someone steals information to obtain drugs for their addiction.
5. Organized crime. A fake medical facility is created and fictitious claims are run through it.
   

To help prevent theft keep a close eye on your insurance card and check your statements to see if there are ever any claims that are not valid. Every medical practice should take steps to safeguard medical records.

Gregory Navone of Las Vegas, settled with the FTC for FACTA violations at his two Nevada mortgage companies. Navone owns First Interstate Mortgage Corporation and Nevada One Corporation. The settlement stem from an FTC complaint filed in December 2008. The companies improperly disposed of about 40 boxes of sensitive consumer records. The boxes contained tax returns, mortgage applications, bank statements, credit cards statements, drivers’ licenses, and credit reports.

The dumping of the records was in violation of the FACTA disposal rule. The FTC also ruled that he misrepresentations the data security practices. He was ordered to pay $35,000 in the settlement. [article]