Personal documents found in dumpster

WILLIAMSBURG, VA - A viewer called WAVY.com and told us someone dumped eight boxes, overflowing with confidential documents, into a dumpster behind a Farm Fresh in Williamsburg.

Inside the boxes were medical records, tax forms, voided checks and copied credit cards.

We spoke with Virginia Jones who is the president of the local ARMA chapter, an organization that deals with records management. She told WAVY.com the documents in the wrong hands, could amount to an identity theft disaster.

"People can get their own credit cards under your name, to get a passport under your name," said Jones.

Our investigation found the thousands of personnel documents belonged to a Virginia trucking company called Warrior Xpress.

The first stop in our effort to figure things out was Farm Fresh management, who gave us this statement:

"We feel it's Warrior's responsibility to take appropriate action with the documents. Farm Fresh does not condone unauthorized use of our dumpsters," said a Farm Fresh management.

After more research, we discovered Warrior Xpress no longer exists. A company called Celadon Trucking bought Warrior Xpress in 2007.

WAVY.com set out to make Celadon aware of what we found and the company answered by saying, "For those who met our hiring criteria, we retained their personnel files. All other driver personnel files, remained the property of Warrior Xpress," Celadon Trucking Inc.

With no one left to take responsibility, WAVY.com took control.

Farm Fresh had the boxes removed from their property and we made a call to our partners at Shred-It, a company specializing in the destruction of personal documents.

The next day, a Shred-It truck arrived, free of charge and the documents were loaded onto the truck to be shredded.

Within just a few minutes, thousands of personal documents were destroyed and multiple cases of potential identity theft were averted.

It's a 10 On Your Side success story, but if you've got personal files you want shredded we can help you too.

Four times a year, 10 On Your Side sponsors a Shred-It event at one location on the Peninsula and another on the Southside.

The next Shred-It event is Saturday May 16. Keep watch here at WAVY.com for an announcement of specific locations closer to that date.