The personal information of about 3,300 current and former Tallahassee Community College students was compromised as part of a scheme by two South Florida men to file fake tax returns seeking millions in refunds.
TCC officials announced the theft of the computer data Friday, saying they recently learned about it from federal officials. The personal information was stolen from TCC’s financial-aid office in March 2011.
http://liarcatchers.com/identity_theft_investigation.html
TCC is sending letters to students potentially impacted starting Monday, said TCC Police Chief David Hendry. The letters will detail what steps students can take to check the security of their identities. TCC also is providing additional resources, including a hot line for students to call for more information.
“TCC values the protection of private information, so we take this matter very seriously,” he said. “We have identified the group of individuals whose information may have been compromised, and we will immediately begin the process of contacting each one.”
Hendry said that as a result of the security breach, TCC has identified and fixed vulnerabilities in its financial-aid system.
Two Miami men, Charlton Escarmant, 29, and Arthy Icart, 24, were indicted Oct. 5, 2012, on federal charges that they participated in a conspiracy to steal identities so they could file phoney tax returns for more than $3.3 million in refunds.
Officials with the U.S. Attorneys Office in Miami confirmed that former and current TCC students were victims in the case. They also said more than 3,200 names found on a computer in Escarmant’s possession came from TCC.
Hendry said TCC computers were not hacked from outside the community college. Instead, someone accessed computers within TCC and stole the personal information.
“Somehow or another that got into the hands of those people in Miami,” he said.
The TCC Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are investigating who accessed the financial-aid system and how, he added.
On Tuesday, jurors in Escarmant’s federal trial found him guilty of charges including submitting false claims to the IRS and aggravated identity theft. He is scheduled to be sentenced June 17 before U.S. District Judge Joan A. Lenard. Escarmant is facing up to 24 years in federal prison. Icart pleaded guilty Jan. 17 and is set to be sentenced April 1.
The Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division and the North Miami Beach Police Department investigated as part of the Identity Theft Tax Refund Strike Force.
