[Med-privacy] "First Sentence for Violating Privacy Law"

Sun, 07 Nov 2004 10:30:14 -0800

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<title>The New York Times &#62; National &#62; First Sentence for Violating Privacy Law</title>
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<h5>November 7, 2004</h5>

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<h2>First Sentence for Violating Privacy Law</h2>
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 
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<NYT_TEXT>
 <IMG src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/s.gif" width="29" height="35" align="left" border="0" alt="S">EATTLE, Nov. 6 (AP) - Lying in a hospital bed, gravely ill from leukemia and weakened by chemotherapy, Eric Drew began to get mail thanking him for opening credit accounts he knew nothing about.
 After a maddening six months of calling the companies, the police, journalists and collection agencies, Mr. Drew discovered that a technician at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where he received the first of two bone marrow transplants last fall, had stolen his identity.
On Friday, the technician, Richard W. Gibson, 42, was sentenced to 16 months in prison, becoming the first person sentenced under a new federal law designed to protect patients' privacy, federal prosecutors said. The sentence was four months longer than prosecutors requested.
 Mr. Gibson will be required to pay at least $15,000 in restitution, including reimbursing Mr. Drew, 37, for the time and money he spent trying to clear his name.
 Mr. Drew, a mortgage banker from Los Gatos, Calif., recently had his second bone-marrow transplant, at the University of Minnesota medical center. 
 "I felt completely ignored, frustrated and totally violated," he said in a videotape played Friday in Federal District Court. "Nobody seemed to empathize or care about this situation whatsoever, and my doctors and family wanted me to drop it because they were worried about the huge amount of stress this was placing on me. They were afraid it would actually cause my impending bone marrow transplant to fail."
Mr. Drew learned that he had leukemia in early 2003, said his lawyer, Gregory Ursich. He began treatment at Stanford University Medical Center for what he calls a "terminal case" of the disease and was transferred to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in September 2003.
 Within weeks, the mail started. He called the companies and banks about every fraudulent application he learned of, and urged them not to issue credit. Some issued it anyway.
 He said the identity theft consumed his life and made it impossible for him to continue to raise money for bone marrow drives, charities and individual patients. He had raised $250,000 for such causes.

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