An employee at Evoke Wellness is facing multiple charges after allegedly stealing the identities of hundreds of patients from the addiction treatment center.
The unnamed 33-year-old former employee of Evoke Wellness at the Hilliard addiction center worked there from November 2021 to July 2024.
The company provides substance use disorder treatment for various drug and alcohol disorders, including opioid use.
While working for Evoke Wellness, the man stole troves of personal information from victims before selling it on the dark web.
The man allegedly stole names, addresses, birthdates, and Social Security numbers of at least 240 people, The Columbus Dispatch reports.
Police claim that many of the victims were in central Ohio, but there could be more victims across the United States.
With all this personal information, an attacker could easily clone someone's identity, which would then allow criminals to take out loans in the person's name or commit other fraudulent acts.
Once all the personal information was gathered, the criminal sold this data on the dark web to other bad actors.
These dark web criminals then used the stolen identities to buy cars, apply for credit cards, and purchase cryptocurrency, an article from The Columbus Dispatch states.
Not the first time Evoke Wellness exploits addicts
While this unnamed criminal’s activities could seem like a one-off for Evoke Wellness, the substance abuse clinic has been seen exploiting addicts in different ways.
Evoke Wellness apparently released over 68,500 Google search ads to purposefully deceive addicts looking for treatment.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Evoke Wellness and its officials, Jonathan Mosley and James Hull, in January 2025 for using deceptive Google search ads.
The lawsuit put forward by the FTC explained that Evoke Wellness used deceptive Google search ads to trick those suffering from substance use disorders into contacting its call center over other substance abuse clinics.
Using the names of other clinics as keywords, Evoke Wellness pretended to be those clinics to get more people to come to their company.
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