Former IT Manager Seeks Redress with SarbOx Whistleblower Lawsuit.(Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association - College Retirement Equities Fund)

Publication: eWeek

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Ziff Davis Media Inc.

Chris O'Keefe was, in a former life, an IT manager in charge of customer relationship management implementations at TIAA-CREF, a prestigious financial institution that handles some of the nation's largest academic retirement funds.

OKeefe's story is a cautionary tale for anyone in IT--particularly anyone that handles sensitive customer data.

Well into his 13th year on the job at TIAA-CREF, one of O'Keefe's subordinates, a contractor named Sonia Radencovich, was recognized by a colleague as a felon who had helped her lover swindle more than $200 million from insurance firms.

She was scheduled for sentencing to federal prison several months into her job at TIAA-CREF.

But before Radencovich's true identity had been discovered--she had applied for the job at TIAA-CREF using the alias Sonia Howe--she'd had unfettered access to customer data for a couple of months.

And she brought her own laptop and a couple USB devices to work, which she used to download customer information (it's not clear how much information she downloaded).

"Sonia Howe had access that she needed to perform her job function--projects that had to do with the call center,...

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