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Man charged in ID theft at port

A computer technician copied a database and used it to seek credit cards, officials say.

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published April 13, 2007

A contractor's employee took personal information on thousands of people with Port of Tampa access badges and applied for credit cards in the names of about 20 of them, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Daniel E. Glenn, 29, was arrested near his Lakeland home Thursday and charged with an offense against intellectual property to defraud and obtain property, a second-degree felony.

A computer technician for Siemens Building Technologies, Glenn was working on a computer upgrade at the Tampa Port Authority on Feb. 28.

He told port authority employees he needed access to the security badge database to fix corrupted data, according to an arrest report. The authority has issued 39,000 badges for longshoremen, truckers and workers at port businesses to enter secure areas along the waterfront.

"He copied thousands of names but only acted on a very small number," said Mark Dubina, a supervisor with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Tampa. "He basically copied the database."

FDLE agents and police recovered the data - including Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses - from Glenn's home Thursday, port director Richard Wainio wrote in a memo to employees.

Glenn used stolen data from about 20 people to make applications to at least four different credit card companies over the Internet, the FDLE said.

Investigators don't believe he got any cash or merchandise with cards issued in other people's names. Most of the victims are port authority personnel. They included a governing board member and two managers, said Wainio, who declined to identify them.

Glenn was suspended with pay from Siemens Building Technologies, a subsidiary of German conglomerate Siemens AG, said spokesman Steve Kuehn. The company is investigating the allegations.

"In any instance like this, we take the issue very seriously," Kuehn said. "We want to assure customers of the integrity of our service and our relationship."

About 10 days ago, several port authority employees reported receiving calls from companies about credit card applications they'd never filled out, said Wainio. They asked whether hackers had accessed the port's computers.

Officials told the FDLE about the earlier computer work by Siemens and identified Glenn as the technician.

Investigators notified the three major consumer credit agencies. They monitored Glenn's home mail and found correspondence from financial services companies addressed to people in the port database, according to the arrest report.

A video camera at a Wachovia Bank branch in Temple Terrace captured Glenn trying to withdraw money using a fraudulently obtained credit card, the report states.

Dubina said FDLE officials were initially concerned that Glenn could have tampered with the database to let an unauthorized person obtain an ID into secure parts of the port. "But we do not have any reason now to think that occurred," he said. The investigation is continuing. The FDLE is asking people with information to call 1-800-226-1140.

Wainio said there was never a security risk to the port. The port authority notified employees once the FDLE found evidence Glenn used their information to apply for credit.

Other employees didn't officially learn about the data security breach until Friday afternoon at the request of FDLE, Wainio said.

He asked staff to investigate and recommend security improvements. One likely change: requiring a port employee to stay with contractors working on sensitive databases and make sure they don't leave with anything.

"It's a wake-up call," Wainio said. "We were lucky."

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or 813 226-3384.

[Last modified April 13, 2007, 07:14:55]