Memorial Healthcare System has fired two employees after officials say they stole identities of hospital patients in an attempt to use the information to file phony tax returns.
Hospital spokeswoman Kerting Baldwin told the South Florida Sun Sentinel the former employees are under criminal investigation. She says Memorial sent letters Thursday to about 9,500 patients whose identities could have been exposed.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the IDs were used to file fake tax returns
Baldwin says the hospital detected the breach on Jan. 27. She says former patients whose IDs may be affected should receive letters by April 25. The hospital is providing a free year of credit monitoring to these patients.
Memorial Healthcare System operates five hospitals in Broward County.
"I mean imagine when you go to file your tax return and the IRS tells you we're sorry, someone else has already filed it and collected your refund," said US Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at a news conference at the Broward Sheriff's Office on Friday.
The Congresswoman is sponsoring legislation called the STOP-IT Act, designed to increase penalties for criminals who use stolen identities to file tax returns.
"The goal of the STOP-IT Act is to make it not worth it for these criminals to steal taxpayer's identity and file their returns and collect their refunds, right now, it's worth it," said Wasserman-Schultz.
Law enforcement agencies say it's a huge problem. Giving out fraudulent tax refunds, then sending refund checks to the legitimate taxpayers, cost the government $5.8 billion last year. BSO says just since February, it has received 1,000 cases of people reporting that someone has filed a tax return in their name, and that's just one agency.
Sgt. Jay Leiner works on these cases and helped the Congresswoman draft the legislation.
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"One young lady said 'I'm losing my house, I didn't get my return, can't pay my taxes.' This isn't something where it's just your identity. No. This is a lot more," said Leiner, recounting one of the many cases he's dealing with.
"This is a disease in this country, and it must be eradicated, and this legislation will help," said Ron Myers, a CPA who has many clients like Peter and Joyce Egelhoff.
"Our joint return got rejected by the IRS because someone beat us to it and filed an individual tax return using Joyce's name," said Peter Egelhoff.
Now the elderly, fixed-income couple will have to wait months for their refund check. The same thing happened to Joan Rubinstein, two years in a row.
"I was very upset, and it's absolutely needed money. It's for my daughter's college tuition," said Rubinstein, a pre-school teacher.
