A Veteran Affairs employee has been charged with aggravated identity theft in connection with fraudulently obtaining personal information of patients at the James A. Haley Veteran\u2019s Hospital. The indictment was unsealed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
According to a press release, U. S. Attorney Robert E. O’Neill<\/strong> announced the unsealing of the indictment charging David F. Lewis<\/strong> with wrongful disclosure of health information, access device fraud, and aggravated convicted, Lewis<\/strong> is facing a maximum penalty of ten years in federal prison on each count of wrongful disclosure of health information and ten years\u2019 imprisonment on each count of access device fraud, all to be followed by up to two years for each aggravated identity theft offense.<\/p>\n The indictment also notifies Lewis<\/strong> that the United States is seeking a money judgment in the amount of $105,271.00, which is the proceeds of the charged criminal conduct.<\/p>\n According to the indictment and court documents, Lewis<\/strong> was a Department of Veterans Affairs employee who illegally obtained the identities of patients at the Veterans Hospital.\u00a0 Lewis <\/strong>then sold those identities to others, who used them to file fraudulent U. S. income tax returns and obtain fraudulent tax refunds.<\/p>\n Lewis <\/strong>was arrested on July 2nd<\/sup> by the U. S. Marshals and held until his initial court appearance. His bond was set at $50,000.<\/p>\n Special Agent in Charge Quentin G. Aucoin<\/strong> of the Veterans Affairs, Office of the Inspector General, stated, \u201cThese crimes are particularly egregious, and the VA Office of Inspector General is dedicated to aggressively investigating individuals who misuse patient information, especially when used for personal and financial gain.\u201d<\/p>\n Special Agent in Charge James Robnett<\/strong> of the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation stated, \u201cThe indictment and arrest of David F. Lewis<\/strong> by members of the Tampa Bay Alliance, in partnership with the U. S. Attorney’s office, demonstrates the continued commitment the members of the alliance have in investigating identity theft and stolen identify refund fraud that is in the Tampa Bay area.\u00a0 The alliance will continue to vigorously investigate this crime which has victimized the most vulnerable citizens in the Tampa Bay area.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Veteran Affairs employee has been charged with aggravated identity theft in connection with fraudulently obtaining personal information of patients at the James A. Haley Veteran\u2019s Hospital. The indictment was unsealed on Tuesday. According to a press release, U. S. Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announced the unsealing of the indictment charging David F. Lewis with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}