A mother and son whose personal information was compromised at a South Florida school are seeing the trouble rear its ugly head again.
Two years after a data breach in several Miami-Dade schools, phony tax returns are still being filed using the victims' names, NBC 6 has learned.
"I filed my taxes and the next day I got a phone call saying 'Ms. Robie, someone else had already filed taxes for you and your son Nicolas,'" Allison Robie said.
Robie's son is in college at FIU now, but it was just two years ago when as a student at North Miami Beach High the principal told his mother their personal data had been taken off an emergency contact card. Later, a phony tax return filed in his name.
And Nicolas Robie wasn't alone. Leslie Dunn, a former student at Palmetto High, had her information compromised too. Police estimated 1,000 students had their data illegally taken between 2010 and 2012.
Fast forward to Monday, when Allison Robie's accountant delivered the news that both hers and her son's returns were rejected by the IRS because someone beat them to it.
"I was like 'no, it can't be' and he said 'yes, it's you too,'" she said. "'Both of you.' I said 'this can't be happening.'"
The mystery is who's doing the phony returns now. Off the table are the members of a gang called the North Miami Boyz. Federal prosecutors believed they used the students' data initially to file $1.6 million in fraudulent tax returns but for months they've been in federal prison.
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"Over the past several years, Miami-Dade County Public Schools has tightened the security of students’ personal information," Miami-Dade Public Schools said in a statement. "This includes limiting access to personal information, utilizing secure electronic systems to maintain the information and requiring the notification of students and parents who are potential victims when information security is breached."
"I would say 'parents, please be on the lookout every year,'" Allison Robie said. "From here on it's not stopping and you don't not know when this is going to happen again."
So while those gang members wouldn't seemingly have the ability to orchestrate this behind bars, at least in the case of the Robie's the same data that was stolen was used.
NBC 6 notified the U.S. Attorney's Office and they are going to take a look. One police officer familiar with this case said the odds fraudsters would get this information from anywhere else are extremely remote.
No other families have come forward yet but it's the middle of the tax season and if the Robie information is still out there, the same could be true for other families who had kids in Miami-Dade schools during this time in question.
