Plant City Woman Gets 4 Years for Selling Stolen Medical Records

Vickie Lorenzo Bryant, 39, of Plant City, is headed to federal prison for four years after pleading guilty to access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell handed down the sentence Thursday in Tampa, putting an end to a scheme that saw hundreds of stolen medical records peddled like street contraband.

Bryant, once a willing middleman in a shadowy data trade, admitted to selling 957 victims’ personally identifiable information (PII) — names, dates of birth, and social security numbers — to a government confidential informant. The two transactions, on June 9 and June 16, 2016, delivered over 1,000 pages of printed medical records culled straight from Rotech Healthcare, a national provider of respiratory and sleep apnea services based in Lakeland, Florida.

She didn’t just stumble into crime — Bryant knew exactly what she was feeding. Court documents confirm she’d sold stolen PII before and was fully aware the buyer used the data to create counterfeit credit cards and fake Florida driver licenses. The informant had even used victims’ identities to purchase cellphones, deepening the fraud trail that eventually led back to her.

The records Bryant sold were traced directly to Rotech’s billing center, where employees allegedly lifted the sensitive data from company systems. Two of those employees, Fontella James and Sharmekia Young, were indicted on September 29, 2016, on charges of conspiracy, computer intrusion, and identity theft. Their case remains separate, but the operation they enabled was clear: a profit-driven theft of private health data from vulnerable patients.

Every victim whose name changed hands had one thing in common — they’d trusted Rotech for life-sustaining equipment like sleep apnea machines. That trust was shattered the moment their data hit the black market, sold at $15 per identity, totaling $15,000 for nearly a thousand lives put at risk.

The investigation was led by the United States Secret Service and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as part of a Financial Investigations Strike Team initiative. Assistant United States Attorney Mandy Riedel prosecuted the case, sealing Bryant’s fate in a courtroom far removed from the quiet halls of the medical offices where the breach began.

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