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Company fined for dumping records
Pacific Business News (Honolulu)

Fidelity Escrow Services Corp. of Hawaii will pay a $10,000 fine for improperly disposing of 39 boxes of records that contained thousands of customers' Social Security numbers and other financial information, according to the Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

Fidelity provided proof that it had properly disposed of other records, and the state Office of Consumer Protection has made arrangements to destroy the files picked from a Niu Valley recycling dumpster and reported by PBN Editor Jim Kelly in March.

 

The action concludes a lawsuit against Fidelity and its former president, Stephen Marn of Hawaii Kai, who asked a handyman to dump the records he had stored in his basement for six years.

 

The state named the now-defunct company in the action rather than Marn as part of the settlement agreement, said Stephen Levins, executive director of the Office of Consumer Protection.

 

A new law that took effect Jan. 1 required the files to be burned or shredded to keep information from getting into the hands of dumpster-diving thieves.

 

"We are lucky a Good Samaritan found the records before criminals did," Levins said. "Otherwise, this veritable gold mine of information undoubtedly would have been exploited by identity thieves."

Complete Story at http://www.bizjournals.com

Labels: hawaii, shredding fine

 

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Confidata document destruction located in Utica New York, is a member of NAID and follows FACTA and HIPAA records destruction requirements. CONFIDATA is a division of Empire Recycling Corporation

 

 

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