Friday, November 16, 2007

Clients' Legal Info Found In Lawyer's Dumpster

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. ― Police collected 17 boxes filled with Social Security numbers and other personal information from a trash container behind an office building in Colorado on Sunday.
Jeff Smith, a former victim of identity theft himself, found the boxes in Greenwood Village, Colo., and called CBS station KCNC-TV in Denver to complain.
"Came over here to throw some trash, noticed all the files in there, thought that was kind of awkward, so I pulled the files out and they were all legal cases," said Smith. After looking over the documents, they appeared to be from the office of W. Dan Mahoney, an attorney who works in the building. Mahoney admitted throwing them in the trash."I apologize to my clients whose files I discarded in the private business dumpster," he said in a statement. "I did not anticipate someone trespassing through the dumpster before it was to be dumped Monday morning."
Mahoney said he will shred the information in the future and normally does. He said he was cleaning out old files before moving.
"If there was a chain of evidence that would show who did, it, I think there could be a good possibility of litigation," said Bob Pence, a retired FBI agent.

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