"Employee of the Year" Indicted for I.D. Theft, Database Abuse -- Updated

An employee in Oakland's city clerk office was indicted by a federal grand jury for using a commercial database called Accurint to get the Social Security Numbers and birthdates of 11 persons to use for identity theft, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

[Denise Vejmola, 32, of Hayward,] was indicted on two counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer with intent to defraud and one count each of unlawful use of unauthorized access device and aggravated identity theft.

Vejmola was named "employee of the year" by the Oakland city clerk's office in 2002. As legislative recorder, she took minutes at City Council meetings and prepared meeting agendas, Assistant City Clerk Marjo Keller said Thursday. Vejmola left the office in January 2005.

The story does not make clear how or why Vejmola in the city clerk's office had access to this database, which is run by Lexis-Nexis and is based on the same technology and data that powered the MATRIX program.

UPDATE: The City Clerk's office says that when the theft occured Vejmola was no longer employed by the Clerk's office, though it's unclear what other department she might have been at. The Clerk's office has no access to Accurint.