Hundreds of files with personal information left in Lee County dumpster

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LEE COUNTY, Fla. – Only WINK News was there as Lee County Sheriff’s deputies removed more than a dozen boxes from a dumpster Monday morning.
Inside the boxes were hundreds of files containing copies of people’s Social Security cards, driver’s licenses and credit card information.

“Once in a while people do dump things in our dumpster… but nothing like that,” said Rick Schaefer, who works at Closet Factory on Treeline Avenue near Southwest Florida International Airport.

Schaefer found the boxes in the dumpster behind the Closet Factory warehouse.

“I started looking through them and it was a lot of personal information in there so we decided to call the police,” he said.

Schaefer says the files in the boxes belong to the company Coral Palm Auto Sales in Fort Myers.

We tried calling the company, but the number didn’t work. When we went by the address listed, the business was no longer there. A former employee tells WINK news the company went out of business more than 2 years ago.

Schaefer says he has no idea how or why the company’s files were in the dumpster, but he’s glad he found them before they ended up in the wrong hands.

“With personal information and all the hacking and stuff that can go on, if somebody would have gotten that they could’ve had a treasure trove of information about people.”

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office Economic Crimes Division is investigating.

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