Man finds hundreds of documents with personal information in midtown dumpster

ATLANTA — A tip from a Channel 2 Action News viewer has led to the discovery of hundreds of documents with people's names, birth dates and Social Security numbers in a dumpster.

Gregory Evans told Channel 2's Erica Byfield he was walking his dog on Renaissance Parkway in midtown Atlanta on July 27 when he saw a man in a black truck pull up to the large green dumpster.

"I noticed the truck pulling up real slow," he said.

About 10 minutes after walking past the dumpster, Evans said his curiosity got the best of him and he doubled back.

"I'm looking down and I see this whole bottom, it was all clear, it was just all identities, papers, notebooks, torn pieces of paper," Davis told Byfield.

All of the documents were hand-written and contained people's names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, emails addresses and passwords.

A few of the pages had stars next to names and the word "used."

"I just saw money, that's what I saw, because I know what those identities are worth," Davis told Byfield. "It's kind of scary. We know this person has been using this, he has been using this information."

Some of the information was written on paper from a metro medical office.

Davis gave the documents to Atlanta police. Davis described the man who threw the papers in the dumpster as short and well dressed.

"He thought by going to a random trash can and throwing away the documents he would be fine. He just picked the wrong day, the wrong time and the wrong person to do it in front of," Davis said.

WSBTV