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Location Of Theft in AQUA BLUE
URL Of Linked Article In STEEL BLUE or GREEN
Full Content Of Article In BLACK
Theft Description In Body Of Article in RED

Friday, November 19, 2010

FLORIDA (UPDATE) COMPUTERS STOLEN http://www.gainesville.com/article/20101118/ARTICLES/101119358/-1/news?Title=Police-Security-guard-stole-AvMed-laptops


Police: Security guard stole AvMed laptops

A sheriff's office report says he wanted to sell them for cash, not for ID theft.

Published: Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 10:48 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 10:48 p.m.
A 21-year-old security guard admitted to taking three laptop computers from AvMed Health Plans' Gainesville office to sell them for money, not for purposes of identity theft, according to an Alachua County Sheriff's Office report.
The investigation focused on Duran Carmen, now 22, after two confidential sources told an investigator he tried to sell them computers from AvMed. One source said Carmen asked for $20 for one computer.
Carmen originally denied taking the computers but later admitted that he did after AvMed arranged to grant him immunity from prosecution for returning the computers, according to the report.
Carmen led a detective to one of the computers in Trenton, but it was not one of the two that contained AvMed customers' private information.
Tracking software on one of those computers led Detective Charles Snipes to a woman near Orlando who turned it over, saying she received it from a High Springs relative as a gift. The relative denied any knowledge of the computer, but Snipes tracked the other computer to a man who lived just 200 yards away.
That man said someone matching Carmen's description and another man tried to sell him a computer for $20, but he didn't buy it, according to the report.
Carmen told Snipes he gave the computer to the other man, who has a history of dealing in stolen property, and received $100 from him the next day, but the man said Carmen took the computer.
That computer has not been recovered.
Carmen, described in the report as a Gilchrist County resident, does not have a criminal record, according to sheriff's spokesman Art Forgey. He could not be reached for comment.
As the security guard on duty, Carmen was the one who called police on Dec. 11, 2009, after employees discovered that two laptops had gone missing overnight from a locked conference room. AvMed later determined that the computers contained the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and health-care information of 1.2 million customers. Another computer later was reported missing from the IT help desk office.
AvMed notified 360,000 customers in February and another 860,000 in June that their information was on the computers and offered two years of free identity protection.
Five current and former customers filed a class-action lawsuit against AvMed on Tuesday seeking damages and to enforce data security measures.
The Sheriff's Office has received two calls of possible identity theft from customers. Snipes reported that two out of 1.2 million are "well within the statistical average for identity theft by other means."
Carmen told the Sheriff's Office he deleted AvMed's information from the computers before trying to sell them. Snipes reported that none of the people involved are known to have the computer skills necessary to retrieve deleted information.
The company that provides the security software said the missing computer was not reporting back, concluding that it has not been connected to the Internet since it left the home in High Springs.
Snipes reported that there is not a substantial likelihood of personal information on the missing computer being compromised.
Carmen was employed by a subcontractor that provided security services. AvMed now is using a different security firm, spokeswoman Conchita Ruiz-Topinka said.

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