Security breach steals tax info for all Bloomington public school employees

Phishing scam may be using stolen W-2 forms to file phony tax forms.

February 14, 2017 at 3:55AM

Personal information for 2,800 current and former Bloomington public school employees was stolen in an e-mail phishing scam, school district officials said.

The school district is investigating the security breach, in which the 2016 federal W-2 tax forms of all employees were released. School district employees were informed of the scam on Friday.

The information was released when an employee in the district's finance department responded to an e-mail Friday morning appearing to be from someone in the school district requesting the information, said Rick Kaufman, district spokesman.

"Unfortunately, the information was provided before we discovered that the request was fraudulent," Kaufman said.

District officials believe that the information was taken to file fraudulent tax returns.

The district is offering a year of insurance coverage for personal security protection for all employees.

The district reported the incident to the IRS, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team and Bloomington police.

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Beatrice Dupuy

Education Reporter

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