Lawsuit Alleges Fake Data Breaches, Corrupt Prosecutor

LabMD, an Atlanta-based cancer detection lab and the target of an FTC data security enforcement action, has sued a former federal prosecutor for ethics violations. It has also unsealed its False Claims Act suit against a cybersecurity firm, accusing it of falsifying data breaches as a way of landing new business. The lawsuit accuses former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Mary Beth Buchanan, now in private practice, of participating in the LabMD enforcement action as counsel to a whistleblower even though she participated in the case while the U.S. Attorney. According to the complaint, while Buchanan was the top federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh, she authorized the FBI to install surveillance software and equipment to search and seize evidence from the computers of child pornographers in the whistleblower’s office, and the whistlebower, director of special operations for Tiversa Inc., a cybersecurity forensics firm, subsequently used it to search, access and download from a LabMD billing computer “a 1,718-page LabMD file containing confidential health information.” That file is the basis of the FTC’s data security enforcement action against LabMD. The company’s False Claims Act lawsuit is against Tiversa. It accuses Tiversa of faking data breaches to lure in new clients including the U.S. government. It calls Tiversa’s actions “a classic protection racket, updated for the digital age.”