Lawsuit accuses IRS agents of stealing 60M medical records

Editorial Staff | | Health Exec | Cybersecurity

A recently filed class action lawsuit alleges that corrupt Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents stole 60 million medical records of more than 10 million Americans without obtaining a warrant. The data theft was of such proportions that it affected roughly one out of every 25 adult American citizens, according to the complaint.

The former IRS agents conducted a raid of a company in Southern District of California in March 2011, and in the process seized medical records of individuals not under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation, according to the complaint. The company executives allegedly had warned the IRS agents of the HIPAA-protected records but the agents went ahead and seized them anyway without making any attempt to segregate the files from those related to a search warrant.

IRS agents' seizure of medical records amounts to a violationg of the Fourth Amendment, according to the complaint. The medical records remain in the hands of the IRS, who refuse to return them, and may contain intimate information on every state judge in California, every state court employee in California, members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, as well as other prominent citizens.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction preventing the IRS from sharing the information, an order requiring the return of the records, declaratory judgment to protect the proprietary and privileged information of medical records seized, $25,000 in compensatory damages "per violation per individual" and punitive damages for constitutional violations.

Editorial Staff

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