Health Information Compliance Alert

PRIVACY:

Identity Thieves: Now Accepting Visa, Mastercard And PHI

Personal medical information: Don't leave home - or your clinic - without it.

An orthopedic clinic's disposal of patients'personal medical information led to a nursing assistant being charged with four counts of financial identity fraud, six counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, seven counts of financial card fraud, and caused one giant migraine for a North Carolina practice.

The suspect in the case, Ntoto-Mayala Jewce Nyuwa, a nursing assistant at Mayview Convalescent Center in Raleigh, may have ransacked Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic's trash bins in order to obtain medical forms, which he then allegedly used to obtain credit cards to purchase personal items, the News and Observer reports.

An assistant district attorney in the case, Jennifer Knox, told the News and Observer  that Nyuwa appears to have obtained multiple credit cards for each victim. Investigators found nearly 400 patient names in Nyuwa's home and said more than 40 of those patients are victims of identity fraud.