Late yesterday afternoon (April 21, 2020), PPOA was notified by Employee Retention Benefits (ERB) and the Claremont Police Department that during an arrest, property recovered at the scene included just under 200 applications for ERB insurance. These applications of Los Angeles County employees include personal information and identifiers including name, Social Security numbers, address, phone, and email. Working through the evening, ERB staff have now identified there are an additional 650 applications missing as a result of this theft. All criminal documentation has been submitted, and the investigation is being conducted with the assistance of the Claremont Police Department, the Pasadena Police Department, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
In December 2018, ERB began offering a suite of supplemental insurance products (life, cancer, disability) to PPOA members, Sheriff Department employees and County of Los Angeles employees. Through agreement, all ERB clients that worked for the County of Los Angeles had their insurance premiums deducted through the PPOA payroll slot and continue to do so. PPOA does NOT and has NEVER retained any ERB insurance application information and PPOA has NOT had any breach of data or information security.
IMPORTANT: If you, as a member, purchased or enrolled in voluntary insurance benefits with ERB during the period of December 1, 2018 through October 31, 2019, your personal information was possibly compromised. At this time, PPOA recommends you take any proactive measures to protect yourselves including, but not limited to:
- • Conduct an immediate review of your credit history;
- • Consider a credit freeze with each of the three credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian;
- • Consider a credit protection service;
- • Advise your family if they were included in any documentation submitted to ERB, and
- • From a personal safety perspective, stay alert and be cautious of your surroundings
AGAIN, only those individuals, having enrolled in voluntary insurance benefits with ERB between December 1, 2018 and October 31, 2019, have been potentially compromised. If it is determined that your application has been compromised, you will be personally notified.
At this point, ERB management is working feverishly to provide information to the investigating agencies, reach out to those affected utilizing a staffing response team, and has pledged a one-year credit monitoring service to ALL potentially affected policy holders and their families.
PPOA has made our resources available to the investigating agencies to assist in any way, as well as to ERB in communicating information to our members as it develops. Please monitor these emails, the POPA website, and mobile app for additional information as it becomes available.