Two former human resources associates with Home Depot have been arrested for accessing the personal information – including Social Security numbers – of employees and attempting to use that data to open fraudulent credit cards.
How many victims? As many as 20,000 individuals are being notified. An email sent by one suspect contained the personal information of more than 300 employees.
What type of personal information? Birth dates and Social Security numbers were among the information that was accessed.
What happened? Three former human resources associates with Home Depot were arrested for stealing employee information and opening fraudulent credit cards.
What was the response? The U.S. Secret Service is investigating. The three human resources associates were fired and arrested. All potentially impacted employees are being notified and offered free credit monitoring services.
Details: The two human resources associates – Lakisha Grimes and Paulette Shorter – were authorized to access the employee information and did so for nefarious purposes between November 2013 and December 2013. Customer information was not impacted. According to court documents, charges against Claudette Grimes were dropped in March 2014.
Quote: “Our corporate security, IT security and legal teams quickly investigated the matter and notified law enforcement, and the three associates were subsequently arrested,” Stephen Holmes, director of corporate communications at Home Depot, said.
Source: wsbtv.com, “Home Depot employees charged with stealing co-workers' personal info,” Feb. 5, 2014; ajc.com, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Home Depot workers accused of employee information theft,” Feb. 5, 2014.
