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NEWSWIRE
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Life Time sued for exposing members to identity theft |
By Brian Davidson, Managing Editor - 08.10.2007
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DALLAS - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot last week brought a lawsuit against Life Time Fitness after six of its Texas-based facilities were cited for exposing hundreds of members to identity theft by dumping personal information in easy-to-access outdoor trash containers.
The clubs are in violation of the Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act, said Abbot, a 2005 state law that requires businesses to erase, shred or otherwise make unreadable any information that identifies their customers.
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"Bottom line is, Life Time Fitness has put into their dumpsters information that is personal, private, and that could subject their customers and employees to identity theft," Abbot said in a press conference last week. "This information is a gold mine for identity thieves."
According to Lee Kroll, general manager of a Life Time Fitness club in Woodbury, Minn. - located near corporate headquarters in Eden Prairie - the standard procedure for all Life Time facilities has been to shred all documents containing personal information.
"Our policy is pretty standardized across the board," he said. "We're either supposed to shred our documents or have a [paper] shredding company do it."
But Investigators with the attorney general's office discovered improperly discarded documents outside the Texas clubs that linked the Social Security and credit card numbers of several members to their full names and addresses. The clubs also put a number of employees at risk, said Abbot, by dumping IRS forms and "even more personal information that could be categorized as medical information."
Brian Langford, a former Life Time member whose personal information was found in a dumpster outside one of the accused clubs, called the conduct "unacceptable behavior."
"For someone like me to put my trust in a company and pay them money and then them throw my personal info in the dumpster for whoever wants to get it is unacceptable to me," Langford said at last week's press conference. "And that is why I'll no longer be a member of that facility starting today."
Neither Langford nor any other members of the involved clubs have reported instances of identity theft.
Life Time issued a statement saying, "we intend to work with the Texas Attorney General's Office to ensure that our members' sensitive personal information is properly protected."
But the company has otherwise declined to comment on the charges.
"We do not comment on matters that are pending litigation," public relations manager Kent Wipf said. "The first we heard about this was last week, so we're still in the process of gathering whatever information we can."
Additionally, the attorney general is accusing Life Time of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which gives him the authority to seek penalties of up to $25,000 per violation, and for breaking Chapter 35 of the Business and Commerce Code, which provides for civil penalties of up to $500 per abandoned document. The attorney general will seek $50,000 per violation of the Theft Enforcement and Protection Act, he said.
"Admittedly, $50,000 per violation is a stiff penalty," he said. "But it is a penalty that is needed for gross and egregious violations like what we found to get the message across for Life Time Fitness and any other potential violators that identity theft is a crime in the state of Texas that we simply will not tolerate."
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