The Virginia Watchdog

11/16/09 - Wake up Shelby County, Tennessee citizens - past and present!

The Shelby County Register of Deeds, Tom Leatherwood, is spoon feeding SSNs to anyone on this planet who has a computer and who goes to his site and searches "property records." They are public records but they don't need to be online complete with SSNs like this one...and this one...and this one...and this one which we found in minutes on Leatherwood's site. These records in pdf format should belong to elected State officials who have no clue their SSNs are on the World Wide Web thanks to Leatherwood.

Leatherwood knows the SSNs are on his site but yet refuses to shut it down. Translated that means he will not protect everyone including people who live in Shelby County now or those who may have moved and left a paper trail behind with their SSN on it. The numbers need to be blacked out on 100% of those records and not just on the few belonging to those who now know about this mess.

Last week Leatherwood acknowledged to a reporter from the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis that he knows that "some" SSNs are on his site. Here is the article about that.

Actually, Mr. Leatherwood, there are tens and tens of thousands of them on your site and they are very easy to find.

SSNs are on Federal Tax liens ("identifying number"), many powers of attorney, many Deeds of Trust (on first signature page) beginning in the early '90s, and UCC-1s (many in the 90s but most in the 2000s) just to name a few instruments that have them.

Once the SSNs are found on Deeds of Trust, more can be found by doing an adverse search and looking up the "trustee" or mortgage company name for the same time period where a SSN is found.

A search just now shows SSNs to be on the Federal tax liens on his site all the way back to the mid 70s. If there are two names on the tax lien then the SSN is usually for the first person named; however, there are many SSNs on tax liens for just one person - and Leatherwood is giving the SSNs to identity thieves in this country and worldwide.

It only takes to click on his Property Records search link. Then under "Search Type" click on "Instrument Type" Then below that, pick one of those types of instruments like Federal tax liens. Pick a time period like 01/01/1994 thru 01/01/1995.

On the UCCs, searching for Deere, New Holland Credit, Kubota Credit, Case Credit, Matco Tools will yield SSNs on early 2000 records. However, SSNs appear on records from the 90s as well.

People have no clue that these records have been on his website for several years.

On his website he says "The only reason we are here is to serve you, the customer."

His "customers" are sitting in homes and internet cafes the world over right now digging into those records looking for all the SSNs they can find.

When is the next election in Shelby County? He needs to go.

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