[From article]
Government employees have been caught stealing students' personal information to apply for loans, credit cards and set up new cell phone accounts,Daily Mail Online has learned.
Reports on breaches of staff conduct inside the Department of Education shows how workers stole social security numbers from a database while a man was fired for trying to look up President Barack Obama’s student loan records.
Cyber security campaigners warned that the failure to protect sensitive information because of 'bureaucratic incompetence' is just the 'tip of the iceberg'.[. . .]
One woman created a bogus Department of Education account to access the National Student Loan Data System to aid her criminal plot.
While accessing the records, she would extract information from individual accounts.
She swapped around the last four digits of her SSN with those of another during the scheme, and set up the fake identity to apply for credit cards, personal loans and set up a Sprint cell phone account.
An internal investigation within the department found she went into the database 24 times between 2006 and 2009 to retrieve the information.
Just 24 hours after searching through the database on one occasion in 2009, the documents revealed she applied for a personal loan.[. . .]
After pleading guilty, she was sentenced to 18 months in jail with a 17-month suspended sentence. However, according to the documents, the employee only served a month in prison and was then given authorized work by a judge.
[. . .]
Another part of the document trove described the investigation into Joseph Butler, a veteran department employee from Clarkstown, Georgia, who accessed child pornography for years.
More than 70 disturbing images were founded embedded in several Microsoft Word documents that were then saved to his government computer.According to reports he was able to filter his computer activity and get around filtering software preventing government staff from visiting illicit websites.
His Internet browsing history also revealed he had searched for child nudity and pornography.
Butler used his computer to download images onto CD-ROMs, which federal agents found during a search of his home in July 2011. Agents also found graphic stories Butler had written about children.
He is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence.
EXCLUSIVE: Fraudsters in Department of Education are caught stealing students' personal information to apply for loans and cellphones - and one worker looked up Barack Obama's student loan records
One employee used students' personal information to apply for a loan
A number of other workers were also involved in the illicit scheme
Created 'bogus' social security details related to another person
Another government employee lost their job for trying to access Obama's student loan files in 2011
A third was probed last year for promoting his own business using government phones and computers at the taxpayers' expense
Cyber security campaigners said this is just the 'tip of the iceberg' and 'bureaucratic incompetence' could put personal information at risk
By WILLS ROBINSON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 11:18 EST, 2 March 2015 | UPDATED: 13:50 EST, 2 March 2015
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