Florida Man Pleads Guilty to Patient Data Scheme

A 35-year-old Florida man, Dale Munroe, has pleaded guilty to accessing more than 760,000 patient records from 2009-11, and selling them to the agent of a medical center, chiropractic clinics, and an injury hotline, the Orlando Sentinel is reporting.  According to the Sentinel, Munroe plead guilty to an Orlando court on one count of conspiracy and one count of wrongful disclosure of health information., admitting he committed the crime when he was an emergency department employee at Florida’s Celebration Hospital, a 112-bed acute care facility.

In the Sentinel piece, it says Munroe was paid by Sergei Kusyakov, who according to this report from Orlando-area TV station WFTV, is a manager for an injury help hotline. Back in August, Munroe was first arrested by local authorities for the crime. In the federal complaint and investigation, it was detailed that Munroe received an average of $1,200 in payments from Kusyakov for the pieces of information.

The complaint details how one patient who was in a motor vehicle accident had later received a call from an unknown caller that knew all about the accident. The victim’s mother called Florida Hospital Celebration about the breach, and that’s when the hospital went into a thorough investigation and discovered Munroe’s alleged breach.