Another LWDA Screw-Up: 64,000 tax forms using SSNs & income sent to wrong addresses...courtesy of Victoria Bradshaw's EDD

For those that think Victoria Bradshaw is nothing but smiles and blond hair, she just so happens to head the EDD as well as the DIR (parent of DLSE). Unfortunately, she won't be calling the credit agencies any time soon to inform them what her EDD recently did to the 64,000 people who have been victimized thus far. Her Employment Development Department (EDD) sent Social Security Numbers and private financial information to 64,000 bad addresses. Instead, her agency used the information inappropriately (about 64,000 times) when they mailed the information to the bad addresses. There's this thing that's (sorta) a hot button: IDENTITY THEFT. You see, she's not stuck with having to wait on the phone with all three credit agencies, she's not stuck trying to freeze or password protect such information from being used inappropriately. That extreme waste of time is passed down to the citizens of California. Nice job, Vicky. Arnold made an interesting choice making you the leader of the LWDA.

Victoria Bradshaw's mouthpiece for this snafu is EDD spokeswoman Velessata Kelly, who blamed a software glitch. "The software glitch has been suspended without pay pending a full investigation by Victoria's peeps"....just kidding! Victoria's peeps are too busy making illegal infomercials (see Jose Millan & his groupies) for such minutia like potential identity theft. The EDD pretards discovered the glitch last month, but the victims weren't told until last week. Hmmmm, I wonder how much damage an identity thief can do to someone's credit/credit rating in 3 weeks?

I wonder where the accountability will rest on this issue? Will they make Vicky call all 3 credit agencies for each of the 64,000 victims as part of EDD's restitution? Or will they give the victims the collective middle finger, whisper "ooops-our bad, go fix it yourselves" and prepare for their next wave of excuses?

(Los Angeles Times, 03/25/06)...FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (click here)