Police encourage Frontier Homes cutomers to protect against identity theft

Paperwork left behind on Thursday by Frontier Homes when it closed its Celebration sales office in the Maricopa Meadows subdivision might make residents whose personal information might have been compromised uneasy, but it doesn’t mean someone committed a crime.

That’s the word from Sgt. Stephen Judd, a spokesman for Maricopa Police.

“Just because it has been left sitting out doesn’t mean someone is going to use it for wrongdoing,” Judd said.

A resident discovered the files, complete with Social Security numbers, bank account information, photo copies of driver’s licenses, credit account numbers and more, when he stopped by the Frontier Homes office in the 17900 block of North Miller Road (see Frontier Homes ‘investigating’ status of files found outside in Maricopa Meadows).

After briefly retrieving 16 of the files for safe-keeping, Raymond Shaban called the media, and then returned to the site where he turned them over to Maricopa Police.

Judd said unless someone’s personal information is actually reported as having been used inappropriately, there won’t likely be much of an investigation.

“If we don’t have any evidence of any crime like identity theft, we don’t have anything to investigate,” he said.

Even so, Judd added there is a “good possibility that information has been compromised” and encouraged anyone who is concerned to contact the credit bureaus, their bank, credit card companies and more.

Many companies have internal policies where they can add passwords or take other steps to safeguard their funds and identity, he said.

City Councilmember Marvin L. Brown said he believes the matter needs to be looked into.

“That’s very bad business,” he said. “That’s grounds for a suit.”

Judd agreed, in part.

“Just because people lose information or it becomes out in the open in a trash can, I don’t think there are any laws not to do that,” he said. “It’s not good practice, but I don’t believe they are breaking any laws.”

Photo by RuthAnn Hogue