Tommy Goodwin was at a self-storage facility in Converse when he noticed several dozen plastic bags next to a dumpster. Upon further inspection, he realized what he was looking at were hundreds of credit card receipts.
The bags belonged to a business called Force Fitness.
Each bag was labeled with a month and a year, with receipts inside stapled together. Each receipt contained complete account numbers, expiration dates and signatures from the cardholder, all extremely sensitive information.
Force Fitness maintains three locations, one at Fort Sam Houston, one at Randolph Air Force Base and one on Fort Hood. The company sells protien shakes and other supplements to military members at gyms located on each installation.
It is unclear exactly how all the receipts ended up next to the dumpster. In a written statement provided to KENS 5 from an attorney representing Force Fitness, the company claims the receipts were misplaced during a recent move.
What isn’t explained in the letter is when Force Fitness first became aware of the loss of the receipts or whether the Department of Defense was made aware of the potential breech of private information prior to KENS 5 beginning its investigation.
Currently, Fort Sam Houston’s Provost Marshal and the Army’s CID are looking into the matter. In addition, Fort Sam has made contact with the owners of Force Fitness expressing its concerns over the mishandling of information, information that could have potentially put hundreds of soldiers, sailors and airmen at risk.
The owner of Force Fitness, Victor Rodriguez, in his statement to KENS 5 said that his business takes “meticulous” care or records and is “very serious” about the trust the military places in them.
Rodriguez went on to say that it has been in contact with military officials and will be taking corrective action to inform customers who may have been affected by the loss of the receipts.
While all of the receipts contain complete credit card numbers, expiration dates and signatures, most are more than 4 years old and only about a third are still valid.
KENS 5 is currently working to hand over all of the receipts to Force Fitness.
