A previous contractor with the United States Department of Justice has admitted her part in exposing the identities of cooperating witnesses in a federal drug-trafficking investigation.
Danielle Taff was utilized as a contractor paralegal at the US Attorney’s Place of work for the Southern District of Iowa from somewhere around June 2017 to June 2018.
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The 37-12 months-previous resident of Ankeny, Iowa, was hired to get the job done completely on issues connected to civil forfeiture. On the other hand, she admitted employing her DOJ pc to accessibility felony documents stored on the district’s shared digital information storage travel.
Among the information unlawfully accessed by Taff have been stories of law enforcement interviews with at least two people who cooperated with the district in a drug-trafficking investigation.
Taff confessed to using approximately 30 pictures of delicate, non-public paperwork relating to that investigation with her cell phone on May 16, 2018, and sharing the pictures with a friend.
The good friend, referred to in courtroom documents as Person A, subsequently sent the images to quite a few distinct people by way of the social media app Fb.
“As a end result, in October 2018, other people posted people images to a Fb group focused to outing ‘snitches,’ or legislation enforcement cooperators, in the Des Moines, Iowa area,” stated the DOJ in a statement released on November 6.
“Amongst other delicate information and facts, the photos taken by Taff and subsequently posted on Facebook discovered at the very least two cooperators in the drug-trafficking investigation by title and other private identifiers.”
In accordance to the Daily Beast, Taff passed the sensitive paperwork on to a friend in the course of a espresso day. The documents, which contained the informants’ names, addresses, and phone figures, then ended up on a “prevent snitching” Facebook web site with nearly 10,000 customers.
Taff admitted unlawfully using her government computer to obtain governing administration information and providing delicate, non-public info to an additional personal. On November 6, Taff pleaded responsible to one particular count of fraud and linked exercise in connection with pcs in advance of US District Decide Stephanie Rose of the Southern District of Iowa.
An investigation into the scenario is getting carried out by the Department of Justice Business office of the Inspector Typical, Chicago Industry Division.
A sentencing day has not been scheduled.
Some pieces of this post are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-magazine.com