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Patients of Sincera Reproductive Medicine, a Philadelphia area fertility clinic, are calling on the company to pay for a lifetime of identity theft protection after more than 37,000 patients had their personal and health information hacked due to company failures, a new class action lawsuit alleges.
The nationwide Sincera Reproductive Medicine class action lawsuit was filed in Philadelphia on June 1 by lead Plaintiffs Simona Opris, Adrian Adam, and Britney Richardson. The plaintiffs allege that Sincera failed to implement and follow basic security procedures — including its own policies — to protect its patients’ personal and health information.
That failure, the Sincera class action lawsuit alleges, led to data breach, where between August 10, 2020 and September 13, 2020. In that time, more than 37,000 patients had their personal data stolen. That data included names, social security numbers, dates of birth, medical records or patient account numbers, health insurance information, and treatment or clinical information, such as diagnosis, medications, provider, type of treatment, or treatment locations, the class action states.
It also adds that despite the fact that Sincera was aware of the breach by September 11, it failed to notify affected patients within 60 days as required by law. Instead, the company waited more than eight months before contacting compromised patients.
Opris, Adam, and Richardson all say that they received a written letter from Sincera on May 13, 2021, informing them that their personal information may have been accessed or exposed.
“As a direct and proximate result of Sincera’s inadequate data security, and its breach of its duty to handle PII and PHI with reasonable care, Plaintiffs’ and Class Members’ PII and/or PHI has been accessed by hackers and exposed to an untold number of unauthorized individuals,” the class action lawsuit states.
Sincera breached its duty to protect its patients’ highly personal information and knew the foreseeable harm of a hack, reads the class action.
The clinic identified suspicious activity in its internal network server on September 11, 2020 and hired incident response and forensic specialists to assist it with its investigation, which it completed by April 22, 2021. The investigation revealed that the hacker had access to the data for almost five weeks between August and September 2020, according to the Sincera data breach class action lawsuit.
Around November 8, the Maze ransomware site listed “Abington Reproductive Medicine,” Sincera’s former name, as a recent cyber attack victim, the claim states.
The class action lawsuit says that harm resulting from a data breach manifests in several ways, including identity theft and financial fraud. The exposure of personal data puts a person at substantially increased risk of identity theft crimes potentially for the rest of their lives.
“Mitigating that risk, to the extent it is even possible to do so, requires individuals to devote significant time and money to closely monitor their credit, financial accounts, health records, and email accounts, and take several additional prophylactic measures,” the Sincera Reproductive Medicine class action reads.
Jim Trainor, second in command at the FBI’s cybersecurity division, said that a complete identity theft kit including health insurance credentials may be worth up to $1,000 on the black market, whereas stolen payment card information sells for about $1, per the Sincera class action.
Opris, Adam, and Richardson want to represent anyone in the country whose personal and health information was compromised in the Sincera data breach. They are suing for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law. The Sincera Reproductive Medicine data breach class action lawsuit seeks declaratory judgment, damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses, appropriate injunctive and declaratory relief, and a jury trial.
Companies often face class action lawsuits over inadequate data security. In April, Kroger’s was hit with a lawsuit for its alleged “woefully inadequate” management of employee data and response to a data hack has left employees at risk of fraud.
Have you ever had your data accessed as part of a data breach? Let us know what you did in the comments section!
The patients are represented by Kenneth J. Grunfeld of Golomb & Honik PC and Gary F. Lynch and Kelly Iverson of Carlson Lynch LLP.
The Sincera Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Simona Opris et al v. Sincera Reproductive Medicine, Case No. 210502726, before the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.
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