An employee at a major Bronx hospital allegedly swiped the personal information of 12,000 patients and sold those records to an identity theft ring that used the sensitive data for shopping sprees at luxury Manhattan department stores, authorities said.
Monique Walker, 32, a former assistant clerk at Montefiore Medical Center, allegedly printed thousands of patients’ records, including their dates of birth and Social Security numbers, on a near-daily basis, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
The shady employee then sold the confidential information to Fernando Salazar, the head of an identity theft ring, for as little as $3 a per patient, authorities said.
Salazar provided his six cohorts with the records, which they used to open store credit cards and buy gift cards at Barneys, Victoria’s Secret, Bergdorf Goodman, Macy’s, Lord & Taylor.
They bought approximately $50,000 in clothing, handbags and other merchandise, court records show.
“In case after case, 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,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance.
“Motivated by greed, profit, and a complete disregard for their victims, identity thieves often feed stolen information to larger criminal operations, which then go on to defraud additional businesses and victims.”