Email Blunder Exposes Witness Identities

By Greg McNevin

January 13, 2009: The Chicago office of the US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is in damage control this week after an official mistakenly emailed a highly sensitive document naming anonymous sources in a multi-million dollar fraud case to journalists.

According to the Chicago Tribune, executives from the recently felled One World Capital Group allegedly systematically defrauded customers of US$15 (AU$) million. While dispatching a press release detailing criminal charges against two partners from the company, the official sent out a copy of the complaint plus a one page document detailing the identities of 25 sources that were made anonymous in the complaint.

Outed sources include a former staff member from the fallen company, two investment groups and a number of former One World Capital customers.

While confidentiality can be broken by a mistake as basic as using the To or CC fields instead of BCC during large emails, the incident highlights how easy it is for a sensitive document to be compromised with a few mouse clicks.

While a spokesman for Fitzgerald quickly fired out a corrected version and requested that journalists who received the original document destroy it, but this no doubt means little to those who have had their identities compromised.

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