FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. – A Farmington Hills mother has admitted she stole private personal records from some of the most vulnerable among us.
As innocent patients lay in their hospital beds, an employee was victimizing them by rifling through their records, stealing information that could be used in a plot to steal a million dollars from the Internal Revenue Service.
More than 14 people admitted to two area hospitals had their private medical records stolen by a woman who was using them to file false tax returns in other people’s name. Nearly a half-million dollars later, the scam has been exposed.
There's nothing worse than having to go to the hospital for medical attention unless while there all your personal, private records are stolen.
"If you're in a hospital, it's because you're sick," Ypsilanti resident AJ Winters said.
"I would be furious and I would be scared," Ypsilanti resident Brenda Jaster said.
A total of 1,400 patents from two hospitals had their information ripped off in the massive identity theft case.
"I would be very concerned with where my information was, who was using it and for what purposes," Jackson resident Rachel Luker said.
The plan was to use your information to get filthy rich collecting bogus tax refunds from the IRS -- and it worked.
"She is raking it in, Markitta (Washington) is raking it in," Local 4 legal expert Neil Rockind said.
Washington, a Farmington Hills mother, had nothing to say to Local 4 News when we came looking for answers, driving off in an expensive Cadillac. Local 4's cameras received a hand gesture as they drove off.
Washington, who according to court records took a job at two hospitals -- the DMC's Harper Hospital in Detroit and Henry Ford Hospital in West Bloomfield -- in addition to taking home a pretty good pay check she was taking home patents' registration information she stole from computer files, which included names, addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers.
"She perpetrated a horrible fraud on them invading their privacy when they needed and expected their records and information to be safe," Rockind said.
As if that wasn't bad enough, she and the father of her children filled out fake tax refunds and sat home collecting fat checks totaling just under a half-million dollars -- another half million was sent in for refunds but not paid out because federal investigators caught onto the scam.
"To actually betray patients who come to the hospital in need requires a certain lack of judgment a certain amount of deviousness," Rockind said.
Which makes this final part of the story really interesting: Washington is asking the judge for a massive break. The judge ordered her to serve four years in prison, but she is asking not to go to turn herself in for five years so she can stay home with the kids while their father serves his time for the same crime.
The judge has said he will allow deferring her report date if it's approved by the Bureau of Prisons. Local 4 News will report what they decide.
Sources told Local 4 News Thursday night that there will be a new filing in the case asking the judge to cancel the request for Williams to report in five years and instead have her report to prison in June once the kids are out of school and can move in with other family members.