City Hall Engaged in Identity Theft/Creation of Unauthorized Accounts

(Image credit:  Local Organized Crime Syndicates Knowledge Base)

Around the time I launched my web site at www.amarilloexposed.com, City Attorney Mick McKamie threatened citizens at a City Council meeting (article on www.amarilloexposed.com).  I also received threats from an employee of the Municipal Court on behalf of unnamed judges.  I have been subjected to political prosecutions and threats and intimidation from local authorities and politically connected individuals in the past.  So I took the threats very seriously.

At the time, I had outstanding open records requests with the City.  After the threats, I cut off contact with the City and asked that the City Attorney's office not contact me again unless/until the threats were investigated.  To my knowledge, the City never investigated the threats.

City Attorney Mick McKamie recently resigned his position.  After he resigned, I reopened contact with the City and submitted additional open records requests.  The City has responded in a variety of ways to my requests.  I received one response from the City Secretary, Frances Hibbs.  I received an email response from an unnamed city employee with attachments to the email responsive to my request. 

Most recently, I received an email from an unnamed City official (I later discovered that Courtney White of the City attorney's office was the official) telling me that my request was available in my on-line account.   I found this odd, because I had never created an online account.  All of my submissions had been submitted via the United States Postal Service.

Since I had never created an account, I used my email address to attempt to create one.  Astonishingly, I was informed that my email address was already in use.  So I tried to reset the password.  Again, unsuccessful.  I contacted Courtney White.  She responded that she had reset my password.

I signed on to my account.  Amazingly, I found that not only had an account been created using my identity without my knowledge or permission, but that there was a record of my open records requests....INCLUDING THOSE FROM OVER ONE YEAR AGO.   Some of those open records requests indicated that I had withdrawn the request, which I made very clear to Ms. White at the time, was DEFINITELY not the case.

Apparently, rather than investigate my complaints about the threats, the City attorney's office decided that the way to deal with the situation was to engage in identity theft, create an account in my name without my knowledge or consent, and unknown to me, deposit the results of my requests into an account.  And some of those results are listed as "withdrawn" which was a blatant lie.  I specifically indicated to Ms. White at the time that I was NOT withdrawing my requests, only putting them on hold until the threats were investigated.  To my knowledge, the threats have never been investigated.

In addition to raising questions about potential Federal, State and local crimes surrounding identity theft, privacy, internet security, the Texas Public Information Act, and other potential crimes, it raises the question about who has access to any citizens' online accounts maintained by the City thus possibly violating privacy laws and who can make changes to those accounts, thus falsifying information.

This is only the beginning of the story.