SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WCIA) — A "bad actor" who conducted a phishing scam targeting Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) employees earlier this year impacted 933 people, 564 of whom were Illinois residents.
On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission announced that there was an incident involving personally identifiable information within the State of Illinois systems. On or around Feb. 11, the HFS became aware that a "bad actor" was conducting a phishing campaign targeting HFS employees and attempting to gain access to their usernames and passwords.
The scammer sent emails to HFS employees from another government email account that they had previously hacked, so that the emails looked legitimate to HFS employees. As a result, one of the worker’s emails and documents were compromised.
When discovering the scam, HFS worked with the Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) to block the link contained in the email and reset any employee’s password that may have been compromised.
HFS also communicated with all its employees about the threat and reminded the workers about appropriate actions to take when presented with a request for state credentials.
The information that was compromised differed for each individual impacted, but may have included things such as:
- Customer names
- Social security numbers
- Driver’s license or state identification card numbers
- Financial information related to child support
- Child support or Medicaid identification and case numbers
- Date of birth
HFS completed notifying the 933 affected clients (564 of which were Illinois residents) on May 23.
Those affected by the campaign are urged to email hfs.privacy.officer@illinois.gov with any questions they may have. They are also able to contact consumer reporting agencies to place a free fraud alert or security freeze on their accounts, or the Federal Trade Commission to learn more about fraud alerts, credit freezes or other identity theft resources.
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June 6, 2025 at 02:16PM
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