Investigation still on-going...employee arrested hasn't been identified to the press yet....and apparently he/she was selling the SS numbers etc. to a third party...I'm sure there'll be more arrests....

Update: Notorious Manhattan Hospital Involved in ID Theft
By Anna Boyd
23:47, April 13th 2008 2 votes
Vote this article


Shortly after the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/ Weill Cornell Medical Center announced on Friday that the records containing the names, phone numbers, and, in some cases, Social Security numbers of as many as 40,000 patients were stolen, the investigators arrested the person guilty of the fraud.

The theft at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center was unveiled during a federal investigation and an internal audit, hospital representative, Myrna Manners said, according to the Associated Press. She added that none of the stolen data contained private health information, and that the hospital was unaware of any instance where the information had been used to scam individual patients.

The person involved in the ID theft is a former worker at the hospital who was arraigned Saturday in federal court in Manhattan, being charged with computer fraud, identity document fraud, transmission of stolen property and sale of stolen property.

According to the prosecutors, he made use of his access to the hospital’s computer registration system to acquire the information. Moreover, he told investigators that, back in 2006, he was approached by someone offering money for that information. Therefore, he sold a batch of 1,000 records in December or January for $750 and another batch for $600 a short time later.

He was ordered not to leave the New York Area before his next scheduled court appearance May 12. He is currently being held on $500,000 bail.

Anyway, the investigation will not end here, as the investigators believe that the theft could be part of a larger criminal scheme, Manners said.

Meanwhile, the hospital is working on contacting all the patients affected by the identity theft. Also, hospital officials are setting up a hot line for people with questions and offering credit monitoring services for patients worried about possible financial crimes.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan together with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the U.S. Secret Service are working on the case.



© 2007 - 2008 - eFluxMedia