Private Eye Allegedly Used Leaky Goverment Tool in Bid to Find Tax Data on Trump
Summary: A Louisiana private investigator, Jordan Hamlett of Baton Rouge-based Averlock Investigations, was indicted in November 2016 on felony charges of trying to obtain then President-Elect Donald Trump's adjusted gross income through the Education Department's FAFSA online lookup tool, and prosecutors say the attempt failed. KrebsOnSecurity had warned in March 2017 that tax refund fraudsters were using the same student loan tool, and the IRS announced last month that the Education Department was disabling the FAFSA lookup because of that abuse.
Bottom line: The IRS only moved to restrict online access to the FAFSA tool after an IRS employee complained on February 27, 2017 that his personal data had been stolen through it, and TIGTA's deputy inspector general told a House committee his office detected a second attempt on the same prominent individual's AGI data in November 2016.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
- Related
- TSMC employee data breach linked to cloud provider Cyber Risks · Nov 15, 2026Data Breach at La Poste Subsidiary Maileva Affects 22 Million People in France Cyber Risks · Nov 15, 2026City of Osaka warns of data breach impacting 1 million as Japan reels from dozens of cyber incidents Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026