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Enjoy arrest and deportation.
If Time Warner Cable was hoping to attract new customers, allowing employees to arrange for their arrest and deportation is probably not the best way to accomplish that.
But that is precisely what happened to a Burlington, N.C., mom who tried to order cable service for her daughter with a fake Social Security number. An off-duty local police officer working part time as a security guard in the cable office overheard the conversation and arranged for the woman’s arrest.
Now 27-year old Lorena Yanez-Mata faces deportation to Mexico because she is in the United States illegally.
Yanez-Mata tried to use her individual taxpayer identification number to order cable service. The cable company rejected that, insisting on a Social Security number. So she arrived at the cable store with a counterfeit card with a random nine digit number.
When the security officer overheard the conversation, Time Warner Cable says he acted on his own initiative to contact local police, who arrested Yanez-Mata as soon as she left.
Yanez-Mata was charged with obtaining property by false pretense because of the phony Social Security number. But her prospects are likely to be more serious when she arrives in a Charlotte immigration court for possible deportation.
Time Warner Cable tried to distance itself from the debacle, claiming it is against their policy to share personal information with law enforcement and the security officer was not following any company procedure or direction. The cable company has no interest in bringing charges against the woman.
The company did not explain what would happen to the security officer who apparently disregarded the cable company’s policies when he choose to share potentially confidential, personal information with authorities. Nor did the company say whether it planned to issue new directives to avoid similar situations in the future.
Although Triad area residents and the local media used the incident to debate the issue of illegal immigration, another question remains: should an off-duty police officer working as a security guard act on private information he overhears and initiate a police investigation contrary to the interests of his employer?
[flv width=”604″ height=”424″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFMY Greensboro Burlington Mom Faces Deportation After Trying To Get Time Warner Cable 12-12-12.flv[/flv]
WFMY-TV in Greensboro used the story of the Burlington mom to address the larger issue of why people illegally immigrate to the United States. We are wondering how Time Warner plans to handle employees sharing customer information with the authorities. (2 minutes)
Guy does job and TW gets blamed for it?
Off duty does not mean not an officer of the law… He still has to uphold the law when off duty. They have a 24/7 job.
If that’s true, then he should have never should have applied for or accepted a job with his 2nd employer that has a policy contrary to his job as a police offer which is in contradiction. He should also have been immediately fired from the position if he hasn’t already been. By your logic too, anyone with a similar expectation working in the medical, legal, or banking industry privy to private and confidential information would also be in the right to report you to the authorities if they _suspected any wrongdoing or illegal activity, in violation of the privacy afforded… Read more »
Scott, anyone with a similar expectation working in the medical, legal, or banking industry MUST report illegal activity – ie a bank account opened with a stolen social security number… even psychologists have to report crimes if their patent gives them advanced notice. This isn’t an anti-TW story, and as someone that investigates fraud cases for a living I take offense to someone claiming that employees should just look the other way cause Lorena was only trying to get cable and “not hurting anyone”. What if that ” counterfeit card with a random nine digit number” was a valid SSN?… Read more »
I’m not talking about someone purposely attempting to open a bank account with a false SSN, or deliberately planning or committing a criminal act. This is someones personal and confidential information being taken by a party that had no right and disclosed to law enforcement be it police, FBI, whoever. This could very well be the ‘IT’ guy at your ISP when his packet inspection hardware shows you or your family members accessing illegal downloads via peer-to-peer, or knowingly or unknowingly your connection accessing web sites. He doesn’t have any context or authority to monitor or report that, but he… Read more »
He *HAS* to do that, or loose his cop job. You think a cop is going to look the other way and jeopardize his main job for a moonlighting gig? By your logic he should break the law because someone else is. Took a ‘compliance’ course today with a similar company. One thing they emphasized over and over law trumps internal procedure. I doubt he was even reprimanded (considering where it happened i would be shocked if he was). Does the law suck? Yes. But the cop still has his job to do, and the people he works for wants… Read more »
No, as stated by Time Warner, his actions were in violation of company policy as they have denied all responsibility and wrongdoing. He should have NEVER accepted and taken the job if it contradicted his responsibilities as a police officer and his part-time employers policies. Well your company must be a very unique one, I have yet to see or know of many companies that seriously implement or put any sort of compliance program into practice. If that was really the sort of thing that companies believed in you wouldn’t see them violating laws themselves in an attempt to increase… Read more »
Hardly ‘unique’. They have to by law do that or risk being sued (and they have been many times for it). I will not say who it is as I do not represent them here. But the people I work with come from other similar companies and all say the same thing they take these classes all the time (usually once a year). You clearly have no understanding of what most cops have to do. They have a 24/7 on-call job. They are never not police officers. If he was caught looking the other way it would be *HIM* in… Read more »
Meh. Person in country illegally, caught breaking a reasonably just law within the walls of the local Crime Warner. It’s lousy (and arguably illegal) for any utility to be demanding Social Security numbers for identification, but her crimes would be crimes anywhere in the country. I’m not getting the TW-ness of this, other than that it happened at one. Replace “she was only trying to order cable service and ended up deported” with “she was only trying to cash a check…” or “she was only trying to apply for government benefits…” and you see what I mean. To be sure,… Read more »
So internal company policies are stronger than Federal laws now? Wow. We are truly doomed.
Perhaps the cop should lose both jobs for conflict of interest. The police job should be lost for taking another job asking him to ignore crime. And the cable job for violating internal policy while performing police duty on cable company time.
Here’s another case of a business abusing its position and making a claim to your SSN. I *never* provide this information and instead, have paid an extra deposit upfront. The deposit is then credited back to me on a month by month basis. In situations where an alternative is not immediately available, I find or make one. When that is not possible, I’ll do without. There are a few things to take away from this: 1. Never give anything more than what is absolutely needed when dealing with companies trying to sell you their wares. In this case, a SSN… Read more »
Let me start by saying that I am NOT a legal professional in any manner. With that in mind, though, I notice that the Time Warner Cable Privacy Policy makes it pretty clear that your personally identifiable information may be shared with third parties (including law enforcement) without your expressed consent, due to you agreeing to the privacy policy when you subscribe to Time Warner Cable services. Time Warner Cable Subscriber Privacy Notice http://help.twcable.com/twc_privacy_notice.html From Part 1: ” The data that we collect from you, as described above, may be used, depending on the nature of the data, for various… Read more »
Company: “What’s your Social Security Number?”
Anyone who has a clue: “None of your business”
Yeah, well I work for a payroll company, we have everyone’s full SSN, DOB, address, mother’s maiden name, etc already in our database. More often than not asking for your SSN is our way to verify you are who you say you are and makes our job easier when trying to find you in our system. Not EVERY company is out to steal your identity, and if a “bad guy” wants your info they can easily get it other ways in this day and age, don’t be confrontational and create problems with customer service people that are just trying to… Read more »
You may not be out to steal my identity, but you’ve got quite a honeypot there. Everyone in your database has to trust that your IT guys know what they are doing to properly secure the data and we see time and time again that is usually not the case.
There’s no reason I want to make it easier to steal my identity by giving out my SSN to a cable company. If not providing a SSN will also motivate the cable company to protect me from bill shock, that seems like a double win.
She broke the law when order cable with a fake social security number. Then she gets turned in for being an illegal immigrant. Sounds like justice to me. Just because a police man is off duty doesn’t mean he ignores illegal behavior.
This police officer should get a raise! Nice work officer! Case closed! 🙂
This police officer is a hero. Another illegal immigrant sent back to mexico and he stopped cable from being purchased illegally!
The officer is a hero? Come on, he clearly went against company policy.
And since when is it illegal to purchase cable without a SSN?
Jeremy, Since when is it required? If more people developed a real interest in protecting their personal and private information, the rest of us wouldn’t be subjected to this nonsense when engaging in commerce. Would you hand over your SSN to buy a cheeseburger from Wendys? Why are the TWC wares any different? You need to understand the real reasons you’re being asked to hand over this information: 1. Credit leverage. By being able to easily affect your credit report in a negative fashion, the service provider now has the upper hand and can abuse you with horrible service, unreasonable… Read more »
Jeremy,
Sorry, I misread your question. Clearly you understand it is not illegal to purchase a service without handing over your SSN 🙂
I have a lot of mixed feelings on this one, and not because of the woman’s immigration status. Her admission she is in the country illegally makes that a moot point. I am more concerned about whether customers should treat Time Warner’s language about customer privacy seriously. I am swayed by “them”‘s point that an officer of the law cannot ignore a crime being committed in his/her presence. I think that does go a long way to strengthen the officer’s position for doing what he did. But I am also very uncomfortable with the thought that Time Warner has been… Read more »
Personally I see it like this…. whether a police officer or not… should an employee hear, see or otherwise observe illegal activity it must be reported… (no person is above the law) the police officer in this case witnessed the crime and thus reported it… this is not the same as checking the internet activity of an already active client and then reporting them without just cause or a court order… Its like a police officer coming in your home to talk about you possibly witnessing a crime and then spotting a bag of weed on your table in open… Read more »
Great advice seeing how the average person breaks at least 1 law per month, and about 26-30 in a year, petty or not you should be held at the same standard as anyone else.
I’d start planning to hire a lot more police, traffic cops, laywers, and judges in that case.