NYC hospital worker charged with stealing and selling info on nearly 50,000 patients

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - A man who worked in the admissions department at a prestigious Manhattan hospital has been charged with stealing and selling information on nearly 50,000 patients.

The former worker at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center was arraigned Saturday at a federal court in Manhattan.

Dwight McPherson, 38, arrested Friday night, shortly after the hospital announced the security breach.


Read more: http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=8157336&nav=menu605_2

[leftofcool]

1. Selling it to whom I wonder?

[physioex]

2. Anywhere on the internet....

You can purchase a persons id in certain hack servers. And it can be sold anywhere in the world like Pakistan, China, etc....

[Festivito]

13. Health insurers would just love to own it. /nt

[AlphaCentauri]

14. yep, if those patients are subscribed to a subsided health program

like medicare, they would be an easy target for insurance companies looking for easy cash.

[0007]

3. This is definitely a criminal

[bluesmail]

4. In my long lifetime I've never seen such crimes

So many, and it's all about money. They have intentionally and by DESIGN, planned the collapse of America, right down to where cities will not have money for infrastructure, social programs and education, etc. I am Outraged. Outraged

[MsLeopard]

5. Outrage Overload

I've been on outrage overload for so long now I'm making myself and most of those around me crazy. Public apathy toward these crimes has become nearly too much to take. Bush/Cheney neocon bastards have managed to destroy the nation with hardly a peep of protest and I'm ashamed that my generation did this to our children and grandchildren. I'm about to become a grandmother for the first time, and I find it very hard to accept the situation my grandson will be born into. Public debt up to his eyeballs and living in a virtual third world country.

Impeach, indict, and imprison all of them!

[silverweb]

6. I concur.

I truly believe that BushCorp IS systematically tearing down and bankrupting the United States so that a cabal of multinational corporations will be able to step in and take over.

It started with Reagan and has accelerated with each administration since, and it continues to this moment. They're so close to achieving their goals that they can taste it.

[bluesmail]

7. I concur, only the filthy rich corporations have long ago taken over

[silverweb]

8. Pretty much in all but name.

They're not quite there, but are very close, and they've done it mostly covertly. They're working towards the day when they can be quite open about it.

If we fail and they succeed, I wonder if people will call it by its true name, militant global fascism, and resist -- or if they will just bow their heads and accept the yoke.

[gratuitous]

12. Outraged?

This is the free market at its most basic: People will pay for information, the people who have custody or control of that information are selling it to them. Are you trying to stifle free market capitalism, comrade?

Of course, there is the idea that someone working data entry at a hospital is being paid so little that selling the valuable information that goes across the desk every day becomes too much to resist after a while. But then we'd have to think about things like a living wage and that would cut into profits, and how can the hospital's CEO show his face at the marina in last year's model yacht?

Yeah, outrage over greed is probably best.

[LiberalFighter]

9. Post the guy's name, address and social security number online as his punishment.

[Heywood J]

10. If he's in prison, I don't think he'll care.

Perhaps something like two to four hours in prison for each identity he sold. If he's up to 50,000 identities, that's eleven to twenty-two years in prison. Two to four hours each is plenty of time to hand-write an apology note to each person on the list of people he screwed.

[Doctor_J]

11. How much did Cheney pay him?

:shrug:

[mainegreen]

15. The penalty faced under HIPAA

"if the offense is committed with intent to sell, transfer, or use individually identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm, be fined not more than $250,000, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both."

Of course, I don't know if that is per incident or per prosecution. Either way, the penalty is severe.

This person, if guilty, is screwed.