14 DAY TRIAL // An employee of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Christopher Lykes Jr., of Swansea, South Carolina, was arrested after he gained access to more than 228,000 records of Medicaid beneficiaries and sent them to his personal email account.
According to The State, he is charged with violating medical confidentiality laws and disclosure or confidential information.
The records obtained by the 36-year-old man contained names, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates and Medicare ID numbers. The most worrying part is that the Medicare ID numbers are actually Social Security numbers.
Fortunately, not all the records contained the Medicare ID numbers, but only 22,604.
HHS’s director wanted to highlight the fact that this was an inside breach and that the agency’s systems were not penetrated by an outside source.
“It is our duty to secure that information. We are disappointed that one of our own would violate that trust and are deeply apologetic for not preventing the inappropriate release of this information,” said HHS Director Tony Keck.