Drew Mikkelsen reports:
An Olympia man arrested Thursday may have planned to steal the identities of 1,000 people, said Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza.
Anthony Vaughn is held on 50 counts of identity theft at the Thurston County Jail. A veteran detective said Vaughn was likely part of the largest identity theft ring in county history.
According to court documents, Vaughn admitted to detectives he stole the items to support a drug habit.
Detectives seized 40 boxes of evidence from Vaughn’s Olympia home.Police said Vaughn had the names and social security numbers of hundreds of employees with the State’s Employment Security Division.
Those names were apparently on paperwork stolen from a car parked on the state Capitol campus last year.
Sheriff Snaza said contacting all the victims could take more than six months.
Read more on NWCN.
I am not aware of the breach last year, as I do not see any such theft reported on this blog. The only breach that seems similar was one involving an employee of the Washington Department of Corrections, where papers were stolen from an employee’s car, but that car was not on the state Capitol campus at the time of the theft.
But why should it take over 6 months to notify those whose records were found? These were hundreds of employees who should be in the state’s employee database. It really shouldn’t take that long.