A former employee at Dallas-based Parkland Memorial Hospital will agree to plead guilty to illegally disclosing the protected health information of roughly 100 patients who were inmates at Dallas County jails for personal financial gain, court documents reviewed by Dallas News show.
Krystal Ann Hodge, 38 — who is expected to enter her guilty plea before a federal judge next week — is one of 11 defendants who used the patients' PHI in a large tax refund case in which they were indicted in January 2017. Some of those co-defendants are accused of using their jobs to steal personal information as part of the same fraud scheme.
As part of the scam, the defendants allegedly filed fake tax returns and deposited the refunds into various accounts they opened. In Ms. Hodge's case, that entailed accessing the "prisoner-patient files," including computer records that contained Social Security numbers and dates of birth, and sharing that data with her boyfriend, Keith Washington — another co-defendant in the case.
"Washington told Hodge that they could get a 'lick,' meaning they could make some quick money using the information," the plea documents read, according to Dallas News.
Mr. Washington pleaded guilty April 10 to conspiracy to commit offenses against the U.S.
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