NORWICH – A local woman is working closely with the New York State Attorney General’s Office after discovering garbage bags of unshredded, legible personal documents that were tossed in a dumpster in Norwich.
On July 21, Dona Olsen, owner of Little Mews Rescue, stumbled across the bags in a dumpster she rents out back of her location in the North Plaza in Norwich. Curious and frustrated as to why her dumpster was filling so quickly, Olsen took bags of garbage out of her dumpster that she believed were put there by another tenant.
Through the clear garbage bags on the top of the pile, Olsen said she couldn’t believe what she saw: Intact personal documents with names, addresses, social security numbers and credit information left there by a traveling car dealership based in the Rochester area. The dealership had temporarily set up shop at the North Plaza last month.
“I saw paperwork in there, so I opened it up and saw a list of cars and that kind of stuff,” Olsen said. “On one paper, there was the name of someone who was buying a car with their address ... I didn’t think that kind of information should be in the garbage. It had their social security number, their birthday, where they work, how much money they made – you name it, everything about them.”
Dumbfounded and eager to get word out about what she found, Olsen took to Facebook. She posted a message warning consumers about the dealership and what she called “fly-by-night” practices.
“If that information got into the hands of someone who would use it for identity theft, it could create a lot of problems for somebody,” she said. “I wanted to let people know they couldn’t trust this (car) dealership.”
Olsen’s Facebook post was shared among friends until it reached Sherburne resident Kim Shapley, whose son had just purchased a car from the dealership. Shapley contacted Olsen and the two discovered that Shapley’s son was among those whose information was in the bags of trash – and still legible.
“I was very pissed,” Shapley said. “We went through the dumpster and we sorted through, and that’s when we found a copy of his driver’s license and copies of his bank, and that’s when I realized I needed to take this another step further.”
Shapley called the dealership – Vision Nissan of Webster – and said that while it was willing to send a representative back to Norwich to straighten out banking information related her son’s purchase, she claimed it had little to offer in respect to the documents she found in the dumpster.
“Many people in Chenango County, especially in the Norwich area, look for cans and bottles anywhere they can find them. What if someone had checked that dumpster and found those papers?” Shapley said. She took the bags home with her and called the Binghamton Regional Office of the New York State Attorney General. The issue is still being looked into, she said.
“I figured if nothing else, I would shred all of it,” she added.
There’s also concern that disposal of some information by the dealership may be in violation of a New York State law that requires dealers to keep credit applicants’ information on file for at least five years. Dealerships are obligated to follow strict guidelines of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which requires financial institutions – companies that offer consumers financial products or services like loans, financial or investment advice, or insurance – to explain their information-sharing practices to their customers and to safeguard sensitive data.
“I would assume that kind of information would have to be packed up and sent back to the dealership,” said Chris Salerno, Finance Business Manager for Benedict Subaru in Norwich. “You can’t just throw that information out.”
Salerno said that Benedict’s follows a simple rule of thumb: if it’s not needed, it gets shredded.
“What we try to avoid is somebody snooping through garbages and being able to read or piece together certain things to get important numbers ... With identity theft, there’s not much needed to do a lot of damage,” said Salerno. “It should not be randomly bagged and thrown into a dumpster. That’s something we don’t do here.”
“We have heard horror stories from people who go to those traveling dealers,” said Tom Morrone of McCredy Motors in Norwich. Morrone, a member of the New York State Auto Dealers Association, also explained a current push among many auto dealers in the region to pass proposed legislation which would make it illegal for a dealer to have an off-site sale more than 20 miles from their base.
“Right now, a car dealer can travel anyplace in New York State and sell,” he added. “If this bill is passed, it would put an end to that.”
As for the dealership that threw her son’s information in a dumpster: “Personally, I would never go to them again,” said Shapley. “I would not give them the business.”
Vision Nissan was contacted Wednesday morning but was unable to comment by press time. Additional information may be published at a future date.