#goodwill stores

Air-conditioned, music piped in. Mall parking lot full of cars. Everybody trying to keep up with the Joneses by buying what the Joneses already bought. There are more clothes in this world than are needed to dress everyone– and the nice easy way to allow yourself a guilt-free romp at the mall is to bag it all up, and drop it off, especially in the time of emergency.

You have dutifully emptied out…

How about this year we DONATE a little more!  Refresh your space and step into this new season. Declutter & simplify, be intentional of what you keep and what you give away and do some GOOD while you are at it.  Every item you donate to #GoodwillSFL helps people with disabilities and other barriers to work.  #DonateStuffCreateJobs

Goodwill Shopping Adventures

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At one time or another, most of us have donated old items such as clothing, furniture, books and household items to charities such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army.  But, when you donate these things, do you double-check all the drawers and pockets to make sure you’re not donating something you wouldn’t want to get into someone else’s hands?  Well, there is one person who donated items to a central Indiana Goodwill store who could have been the victim of identity theft because a box with of all her family’s personal information was sold.  Yes, all 39 pounds was sold to a woman for $27.69.

When items are donated to Goodwill, they go on sale in one of their stores.  If, for some reason, the item doesn’t sell, it is placed in a bin with other unsold items and the closed bin is sold by the pound.  When Emily Watson checked the box she was about to purchase from an Indianapolis Goodwill outlet store, she discovered that it contained the private information belonging to one family.  The box contained tax returns, pay stubs, bank account information, Social Security numbers, divorce papers, medical and dental records that belonged to various members of one family.  What prompted Ms. Watson to open the box prior to finalizing her purchase was that previously, she made the same type of purchase and when she got home, she discovered that it contained someone’s personal information. 

Once it was discovered that this box, too, contained personal information, Ms. Watson brought it to the attention of a store employee.  The store employee then called the manager over to inspect the box.  The manager sifted through the paperwork and said, “It doesn’t look harmful to me.  It’s OK.”  Since Ms. Watson was afraid that this information could be purchased by someone less honest, she made the purchase herself.

Once the purchase was made, Ms. Watson called WTHR Channel 13 and told them what had just happened.  An investigation was opened by WTHR 13 Investigates to see how wide-spread this problem was.  As part of the investigation, undercover shoppers were sent to three Goodwill outlets in the Indianapolis area.  What they found was astonishing!  These undercover shoppers were able to purchase sensitive documents at all of the stores visited!  To make sure this wasn’t just a one-time incident, they continued to visit these outlets for 2 months, making a total of 28 visits.  Personal information was purchased in 24 of those visits.  What the WTHR employees were able to purchase included immigration documents, valid credit and debit cards, automobile titles, medical histories, drug test results, 401K and IRA statements, college transcripts and many other types of personal documents.

All of this personal information that was donated to Goodwill, then sold, filled three boxes and consisted of thousands of pages.  There were some Social Security Numbers that belonged to Indianapolis Metro Police Department officers.  WTHR contacted Sgt. Eric Eads, identity theft expert, at Indianapolis Metro and told him of the find.  Sgt. Eads’s comment was, “Let me put it to you this way:  this is a police nightmare here.  If someone got ahold of this stuff.  It’s just shocking the amount of Social Security numbers and tax records you found.”

Elesabeth Leclercq was another person whose tax records were purchased by employees of WTHR.  Ms. Leclercq said, “It’s terrible.  I don’t even know what to say.  I’m still stunned and in a state of shock.”  A couple, Julie and Brett Snyder, also had theirs and their children’s personal information purchased by WTHR.  Mrs. Snyder stated, “This isn’t anything we would throw away.  I mean, we wouldn’t have just handed this over to Goodwill.  It’s shocking.  We are completely shocked.”

A woman named Rose who wouldn’t give her last name was the person whose information was found by Emily Watson.  Her statement to WTHR was, “It’s pretty devastating and I’ve had nightmares about it”

How could this have happened?  It’s believed that a series of errors started when a cleaning service sent boxes to Goodwill instead of to the intended storage center.  That is what led to all of this personal information being sold.  Cindy Graham, the Marketing Vice President at Goodwill, was contacted by WTHR and she admitted to their part in this mistake.  What she said was, “We do take this very seriously.  They don’t want us to have it and we don’t really want to have it either.”  She said that there will be an internal investigation at Goodwill and when it is finished, “We’re going to take a look and see how we can prevent that from happening.  Our process would have been and should have been and will be ‘Let’s shred this’”.  One thing Ms. Graham added was that anyone making donations must be more careful in knowing what is being sent out.