Patient data threatened to be exposed in extortion attempt

Express Script; a St. Louis company that manages some 50 million prescription benefit accounts has called in the FBI following a blatant extortion attempt. The company received an anonymous letter containing around 75 names of clients along with all their personal data and their prescriptions. The letter threatens to expose all of them if Express Script doesn’t cough up an undisclosed amount of money.

In a statement George Paz, the company president said

“We are cooperating with the FBI and are committed to doing what we can to protect our members’ personal information and to track down the person or persons responsible for this criminal act,”

The company came clean in light of the sentencing of three New Yorkers involved in the Citibank theft of account card numbers that I wrote about yesterday here at The Inquisitr. Express Script said it got the letter back in early October and while it isn’t aware of any misuse of the stolen data it has notified those affected as well as setting up a website to help their customers out.