Walmart Vendor Involved in ID Theft – Louisiana Victims Possible

How many Walmart retail units do you think are located in Louisiana? Almost every community of any size has a Walmart. Many larger Louisiana cities such as Lafayette, Shreveport, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge have Walmart Supercenters.

Actually, there are 88 Walmart Supercenters in Louisiana so you get the idea that Louisiana loves to shop at Walmart. And Walmart does everything in its power to ensure that your shopping experience is a good one. They constantly monitor prices, offer a great selection, and when it's necessary they will blow the whistle on one of their own.

The "one of their own" in this case is not an actual Walmart employee but rather a third-party vendor the store has contracted with to offer a service to its customers. Many of you have probably purchased a mobile phone and mobile phone service through one of these Walmart third-party vendors.

However, if you've done that, and got a new phone, anytime between March of 2020 and the beginning of 2024 you might need to do some investigating of your personal finances. That's because a third-party vendor contracted by Walmart has been found guilty of using your data to set up fraudulent cellphone accounts.

According to court records from the Southern District of Mississippi Jay Brisco of Houston Texas has been ordered to serve three years probation and pay over $50,000 in restitution to victims for his part in the fraudulent cellphone activities.

Brisco was working at a Gulfport Walmart at the time investigators broke the case. At the time he was an employee of The Revenue Optimization Co. or TROC. During the course of the investigation of a customer complaint Brisco and other TROC employees were implicated in the fraudulent phone scam.

According to the court records the information Brisco and others received from customers allowed them to set up the bogus phone accounts in several states across the southeast. Although we have no direct reports of any allegations out of Louisiana it is quite possible that there could have been.

Consumers who feel their personal data and financial information may have been compromised should contact banking and financial institutions, review credit reports, place fraud alerts or security freezes on credit accounts and you should also make wholesale password changes to your online accounts.

If you did purchase a phone and service plan through Walmart you might also want to review that paperwork to see if you were doing business with the company that was implicated in these crimes. Trust me, it's easier to stop Identity Theft than it is to undo the damage that it can cause.