BONITA, Calif. — An attorney says he hired a professional moving company to properly dispose of documents from his old office, but dozens of files ended up in open dumpsters behind a shopping center in Bonita. Inside, papers with a lot of personal information that someone could easily use for identity theft.
Greg, who asked us not to use his last name, spotted the documents while making his rounds at a shopping center he helps maintain.
“Right away, I see social security numbers, names, addresses, titles, deeds to their house,” Greg said.
“I'm like what the hell!” He noticed one name popping up a lot: Speckman Law Firm. Their slogan: Your financial lifeguard.
“If they're your financial lifeguard, I think you just drowned,” Greg said.
We found a lawyer named David L. Speckman here in San Diego and he confirmed the documents were his. He says he retired a couple of years ago and hired 365 Days Labor Movers to shred the documents.
“I sold my home and I'm downsizing and I'm leaving the state,” he said.
The company picked up the documents on Monday, Greg found them in the dumpster Tuesday.
Speckman says he called the owner, who apologized.
“She wasn't aware of the situation,” Speckman said. “It was employees of hers that had done something that was against her instructions so she was surprised and said she’d take care of it.”
The dumpsters are behind another businesses owned by that same woman. While we were getting video of them today, one her employees came out and pushed CBS 8's camera multiple times before walking away. A CBS 8 reporter later talked with the owner. She said she was trying to get all the files back so she could make sure they're properly disposed.
In the meantime, Speckman, who also had some of his personal information exposed, says the files contained information on about a dozen former clients and he's already notified them.
“I'm aware of who was affected and those are the ones I've contacted and will continue to contact and monitor the situation to make sure nothing happens, myself included,” he said.
It's not clear if any files went missing, but Greg moved the ones he found to a secure location.
Although it’s unclear if any information was stolen in this case, the mismanagement is raising questions about what to do in case your information gets in the wrong hands.
CBS 8 reached out to the Identity Theft Resource Center about steps you can take to protect yourself.
- First, find out — to the extent possible — what data was compromised.
- Second, make sure all your accounts have unique 12-plus character passphrases. If you know which accounts were impacted, change the password of the account and any other accounts with the same password.
- Then, enable multifactor authentication on all your accounts.
- Make sure to freeze your credit and lastly, do not click on any links or attachments in any messages you’re not expecting because it could be a phishing scam.
WATCH RELATED: What to do if your identity gets stolen
Late this afternoon he turned them over the moving company which promises, this time, to dispose of them correctly.
“Literally five minutes after I took the files out and put them in these boxes, literally five minutes later there was a tweaker going through this trash can," Greg said.
At CBS 8, we are always Working for You and our community. This is a station promise that we will go the extra mile to solve a problem our audience can’t solve themselves. We want to hear your ideas on how we can cover and help our community. If you have a story idea, please email us at workingforyou@cbs8.com.
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