March 28, 2007

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  NEWS: Hospital Employee, Son, Stole IDs

  Rebecca Stockdale, her son, and her daughter-in-law may have committed a particularly grievous permutation of identity theft, say New Orleans, Louisiana – area authorities. Stockdale, who was employed until recently as an emergency room clerk at Slidell Memorial Hospital, is accused of stealing the identities of an as-yet unknown number of dead or dying patients that came through the emergency room.
  
  Authorities claim that, when a seriously ill or injured patient was admitted, Stockdale would text message her son, Robert Ezell, with the personal information of the patient, including name, date of birth, and social security number. If the patient did, in fact die, Ezell would then apply for credit cards in the name of the patient, using one of several addresses of houses still vacant after Hurricane Katrina to have the cards mailed. Taking the hideous scam a step further, Ezell may have also searched obituaries in local newspapers for new victims, which Stockdale would then cross-check against hospital records to see if those deceased had been patients at any point. Ezell's wife, Charlotte Cooper-Ezell, is also implicated in the scam by having helped her husband fill out credit card applications using the stolen information.
  
  The scam was discovered when a business rival of Ezell's reported to police that a credit card had been fraudulently opened in his name. When Ezell was arrested, authorities state that he had in his possession the personal information of over 70 deceased persons. The arrests were made March 7, but authorities only went public with the story when they started to become aware of the enormous scope of the scam. Hospital officials are now working with New Orleans police to help identify victims.
  
  It seems that the trio stole the identities of over 100 patients, and had at least 17 credit cards mailed to them using the information. Stockdale and Ezell face over 100 counts of identity theft; Cooper-Ezell faces 84. Stockdale was fired from her job of 12 years at the hospital in light of the investigation. The trio each face mandatory sentences of up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
  
  
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