Dumping of financial info on acreage has adviser’s ex-client ‘sick about it’
Documents with personal and financial information about several people have been found in bags of garbage that were dumped in a wooded area in Metchosin.
“I’m just kind of stunned,” Dani Metzmeier said Monday, the day after she was told that papers with her social insurance number, address, date of birth, email address and phone number had been found in the bags.
Metzmeier, a Times Colonist sales representative, said she was contacted by a resident of an acreage on Sooke Road who had found the bags on the property.
She said some of the documents dealt with investments she made with a former financial adviser. They included copies of emails about her investments.
Metzmeier said she had believed the documents had been destroyed when her file was transferred to a new financial adviser in 2011 — but the call told her that was not the case.
“I was sick about it. I feel nervous and scared and angry that when this adviser moved me to a new adviser, that he would keep copies.”
At least a dozen black garbage bags were seen in a clearing Monday. Some were torn open and notebooks, DVDs and paperwork could be seen inside.
The Times Colonist was escorted to the site by Tom Adamasak, a tenant of the Sooke Road property. The bags were about a five-minute walk up a hill from his home, and Adamasak said it appeared a vehicle had driven past a locked gate.
The man who called Metzmeier about the dumping called several other people as well, and discovered a possible explanation for how the bags ended up in the woods.
The man said one of the people he contacted had invested with the adviser and also let him live in his home. When the adviser moved out, the man said, he left behind a large amount of papers and junk.
The homeowner called a hauling company to dispose of the items — but it appears that instead of taking the garbage to a landfill, the hauling company dumped it in the woods.
“This … guy probably doesn’t have a clue what happened,” the man said.
The adviser did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Mark Wang, director of capital markets for the B.C. Securities Commission, which regulates the financial-services industry, said there are no specific rules on the disposal of financial documents.
However, investment firms are required to keep financial records for seven years and must store them in a safe and secure location.
“I would say a forest doesn’t qualify as a safe location,” Wang said. If a client or investment firm filed a complaint about a possible security violation, the B.C. Securities Commission could investigate and impose sanctions if a current or former adviser were found guilty of misconduct, Wang said.
Metzmeier said she’s unsure what steps to take to protect her financial information.
“Am I supposed to go dumpster diving to retrieve my papers?” she asked.
According to the RCMP, the best way to find out if your identity has been stolen is to monitor financial accounts and check your credit report for unusual activities.
“If you receive calls from collection agencies about unfamiliar accounts, or if you applied for credit and were unexpectedly turned down, you should investigate further,” the RCMP says on its website.