Confidential information shared by the state of Utah with the MATRIX super-computer database is supposed to be accessible only to law enforcement officers in their official fight against crime and terrorism.

But one Utah resident believes that at least one of the supposedly secret Utah databases — motor vehicle records — has apparently been provided to American Express, which is using it to market American Express Gold cards.

"It is no coincidence that I started receiving these American Express letters in December" at the same time the state started downloading its motor vehicle records into MATRIX, said Paul Adams, a West Valley businessman and owner of a private security company. "I have seen enough weird things in my life to know when there is smoke, there is fire."

The state Department of Public Safety is concerned enough about Adams' allegation that DPS officials said Friday they would launch a criminal investigation to determine how Adams' private records ended up in the hands of marketers.

MATRIX officials say the allegations are groundless. "It is highly, highly unlikely," said Bob Cummings with the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, the nonprofit entity that handles the financial aspects of MATRIX. "I cannot believe and do not believe that data would be supplied to any private entity, given the security controls in place."

But if not MATRIX, then how? Verdi White II, Utah's head of homeland security, said the problem could lie in any number of agencies, such as insurance companies, which have legal access to the confidential database and are supposed to maintain that confidentiality. Investigators will try to determine if someone with legal access illegally distributed confidential information.

And that raises questions as to just how secure Utahns' private information really is.

Adams makes a convincing, albeit circumstantial, case that the motor vehicle database has been compromised.

Just before Christmas, Adams began receiving mail solicitations from American Express addressed to the Adams Family Trust at his West Valley post office box. But the Adams Family Trust is listed on no legal or financial document anywhere except for one: The title and registration of his Lincoln Mark VIII automobile, Adams said.

"The family trust is something between me and my sons for when I am gone," Adams said. "There has never been a bank account, never any court document, never a property transaction, never anything in the public record with that name on it."

That was until June 2002 when Adams first registered the car at Motor Vehicles, a division of the Utah Tax Commission. There was no correspondence addressed to the family trust of any kind until December 2003 when the American Express solicitations first began arriving.