Montefiore Health System Data Breach (2015)

An employee theft has exposed 12,517 patients of the Montefiore Health System to a data breach. Montefiore announced Friday that it is notifying those patients that their information was stolen by a former employee between January 2013 and June 2013. The hospital wasn't aware of the theft until it was informed by law enforcement officials on May 15. The Montefiore employee stole patient names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, next of kin information and health insurance details. Susan Green-Lorenzen, Montefiore's senior vice president of operations, said the hospital launched a forensic analysis after it was tipped off about the potential theft. The hospital identified an employee who had improperly accessed information.The employee was fired, arrested and is now being prosecuted for the crime. The Manhattan DA's office identified the indicted employee as Monique Walker, 32, an assistant clerk at Montefiore. In a statement, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr., said "we've seen how theft by a single company insider, who is often working with identity thieves on the outside, can rapidly victimize a business and thousands of its customers." He said that the identity thieves often feed stolen information to larger criminal operations. "In this case, a hospital employee privy to confidential patient records allegedly sold financial information for as little $3 per record." While Ms. Walker worked at Montefiore well beyond the date of the data breach, Ms. Green-Lorenzen said there was no evidence of criminality after June 2013. "This was the criminal act of one individual, and we are responding quickly," she said.