Information on South Carolina Medicaid Patients Leaked

Personal records of more than 200,000 Medicaid patients in South Carolina were exposed recently in a major data breach, according to The Associated Press, as an employee with Medicaid had been stealing the information for months.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Personal records of more than 200,000 Medicaid patients in South Carolina were exposed recently in a major data breach, according to The Associated Press, as an employee with Medicaid had been stealing the information for months.

The news agency reports Christopher Lykes Jr. was arrested this month after it was discovered by authorities he had accumulated data on roughly 228,00 patients in the Medicaid system.

Police told the AP they are still unsure of Lykes Jr.'s intentions for using the data to profit. At least 22,600 of the records stolen by Lykes Jr. contained private information, including medical ID numbers and Social Security numbers. Other files stolen contained names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth.

"I've woken up every morning for the past week praying somehow I could find a reason or the individual who committed the act would tell us this is just a big mistake," South Carolina Health and Human Services Director Anthony Keck told the news source.

Ondrej Krehel, chief information security officer for Identity Theft 911, has a blog about the potential fallout a data breach can have for consumers and organizations, and what can be done to reduce those risks.

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