North Carolina’s public TV network has changed its pledge drive practices after falling prey to identity theft.
Two New York women are charged with using credit card information from 60 UNC-TV donors to pay for rental cars, hotel rooms and plane tickets online. New Jersey and Port Authority of New York detectives arrested the women at New York’s LaGuardia Airport July 16 [2004].
Adaeze Okeke, 22, entered pledge data at UNC-TV in Research Triangle Park, N.C., during a fund drive from February to March. Detectives recovered five sheets of donor information upon arresting her. Authorities said her Manhattan neighbor, Syretta Scott, 23, traveled with Okeke and knew the trips were paid for illegally.
The station hired Okeke through OfficeTeam, a temporary employee agency. UNC-TV no longer allows temporary employees hired for pledge drives to handle credit card numbers or other financial information, says Communications Director Steve Volstad. “We are accustomed to placing a certain amount of faith in the background checks that would have occurred before a person got here,” Volstad says. “But we will no longer do that, so we’ll at this point forward rely only on our own employees.”
UNC-TV is contacting donors whose information was stolen, Volstad says. OfficeTeam has promised to compensate donors for their losses.
Affected donors have been sympathetic so far, indicating that they want to support UNC-TV, Volstad says. “[I]f that turns out to be representative of the way most folks feel, we hope we’ll be able to come through this with a minimum of lasting difficulty.”
Scott and Okeke face charges including fraud, grand larceny and identity
theft. They return to court Aug. 11. Identity theft is punishable in New York
with up to seven years in prison.
New York was home to another case of identity theft in public broadcasting
in 2002, when a facilities department employee at WNYC-AM/FM stole 195 records
of donors’ check information [earlier
story]. He sold them to a major identity theft ring and was later sentenced
to 60 days in prison and five years’ probation.
Web page posted Aug. 15, 2004
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