Woman’s sensitive information found in West El Paso dumpster

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- A woman's personal information, including tax returns, social security number, and addresses, were found in a dumpster behind a business in West El Paso.

ABC-7 received an email about the documents. Our crew went to the dumpster and found the documents. We reached out to the accounting company who prepared the tax returns, and confirmed the client was recently released from her lease because she had to move to assistant living and she lost a lot of personal information.

We reached out to the victim and she confirmed the story. She told ABC-7 that her previous landlord told her he would discard all belongings left in the apartment. The victim says she offered to have a third party pick up the documents, but the landlord told her he would take of it.

I reached out to the landlord and he said he didn't not discard the documents and doesn't know how they ended up in the trash container.

Mina Herrera, has been a tax preparer for 30 years. ABC-7 spoke with her about how you can avoid ending up in a similar situation. She says the only way to properly discard personal information is to shred it.