Sensitive Docs Found After World Series Celebration

If your favorite team wins the World Series (or Super Bowl, or NCAA Championship, or any other sporting event for that matter), don’t celebrate by throwing confidential financial records out the window.

In what is perhaps the most obvious installment of advice ever to have appeared in these pages, we implore you not to do as some overzealous Yankees fans did recently at the ticker tape parade welcoming the World Series champions. According to The New York Post, the rather unorthodox confetti came from some employees with offices overlooking the parade route. "We're finding pay stubs. We're finding personal financial information. We found a balance sheet of someone's trust fund showing $300,000 in stock," one parade attendee, Damian Salo, was quoted by the newspaper.

The Post traces some of the documents—those containing client accounts including Social Security numbers and banking data—to A.L. Saroff, a Liberty Street financial firm. The firm’s founder tells the paper the documents should have been shredded, and the responsible employee has been reprimanded. A report from WPIX.com found both financial and medical records—among them paperwork including a Bronx woman’s birth date, address and private test results—in the debris leftover after the celebration.

“Even a minor league thief would have had an easy time stealing someone's identity during today's parade, as many of the financial documents even included social security numbers,” notes WPIX.com reporter Jeremy Tanner.

An unusual situation perhaps, but it does point to a serious lesson: Whether you’re rooting for the New York Yankees or the Washington Nationals, shred all sensitive personal and financial data. That means Social Security numbers, banking account numbers and anything else that a thief could use to impersonate you.

Besides, shredded documents make for better confetti.