Phillip Hill, VA employee, charged for selling vets’ PII
One of our ninjas send us a link to the story of Phillip Hill, a Department of Veterans’ Affairs employee who was arrested for selling the personally identifiable information (PII) of veterans to an undercover federal informant.
Cody Hiland, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, said in the news release that Hill tried to sell the personal data of veterans, their family members and Veterans Affairs employees for $10,000 to an informant working with law enforcement agencies.
Hill, a database manager, was fired from his job on Dec. 6, but later said he could still access veterans’ personal information remotely by using a Veterans Affairs computer he’d kept or by stealing a server, according to the release.
Authorities reportedly arrested Hill outside a data center at a Veterans Affairs office on Dec. 17.
From Arkansas Online;
A news release said Hill was arrested outside a secure area where the data he was offering for sale was housed, and officers later found a VA computer in his home.
Hiland said officers arrested Hill before he could sell the data, and investigators also discovered that he had used the personal information of another person and illegally possessed blank identification cards.
I know for a fact that VA employees generally have little regard for your PII, since there’s a VA employee who gave my PII to a podcast yammering crank who in turn announced my PII to his audience. The VA OIG has been painfully slow reacting, but I have Lifelock because I don’t trust the government with my information.
Category: Veterans' Affairs Department
Wow 1st time I have been 1st
BTW Fruck this scumbag douche nozzle…
My sentiments exactly.
People like this are the reason I froze my credit reports. That cost me nothing. But Experian got an earful from me with that ‘one of 2.5 million additional…’ stuff, so I’ll have to take them up on their freebies this week.
Idiots. my piggy bank is safer than they are.
Maybe it’s time to go back to keeping money in quart jars in the basement behind the jars of canned tomatoes.
Stake him out in the woods there. The feral hogs need to eat.
The deepest part of the Chesapeake is a short boat trip away from my AO, and crabs gotta eat too.
Sharks breed there, you know.
Ex, have you ever heard anyone anywhere anytime mention “shark cakes”?
Yeah, me neither.
*grin*
“[B]ut I have Lifelock because I don’t trust the government with my information.” I would chuck the last three words. As for this POS, what in the wide wide world of sports was he doing with a VA laptop or pc AFTER his firing, not to mention the access he retained?
Possibilities? These scenarios often happen in various firm:
Scrap/obsolete item released to employee without proper/any scrubbing.
Scrap/obsolete item self-releeases by employee (no paper trail on otherwise permitted action)
Firm has no disposal policy, and it is essentially “help yourself to the boneyard” .
Ouhtright theft, either by taking or deception.
Firm has no asset tracking, thus no idea what employees actually have.
(Worse things exist than the above sample)
Note also, firm may lack proper IT controls and processes to suspend accounts of users and hardware at appropriate times.
The person cited in the article, if the charges are proven, clearly stepped in the dummmy-dookie. Just imagine if a notional bad actor is even slightly more clever.
I’ll take door #5: Firm has no asset tracking.
And Door #7, too, if I may.
How long before the union gets him reinstated? F-ing scumbag, you must give us all your information or you get nothing from us (although we’re going to fight you over every penny you get anyway), we promise we won’t sell it or misuse it…but our employees, not so much they pretty much do what they want. Throw the book at this SOB. I would like about five minutes alone with this clown, I will need a 1cc syringe, needle, and urine specimen; gonna give him a present he won’t ever forget.
And my Wife wonders why I’m so adamant about having LifeLock.
This guy is pure squeak hole O ring residue.
Skid mark fungus.
That should go on the WOI if it isn’t there already.
With all of the identity theft victims in the US, we just might be able to get a law past the SCOTUS that reinstates public floggings and the old tar and feathers treatment of identity thieves.
I’d certainly vote for that.
40 stripes save one. Get Biblical on his buttocks.
and then there were the two females who pilfered funds from VA……….and what happened to them?
Nothing
They were transferred and never required to pay back the $$$
Feed him through a wood chipper and dump his remains on the compost pile.