Guilty plea in U. Hospital records theft

One of the men accused of possessing the personal information of more than 1.5 million patients from University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics has pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

Court records show Shadd Dean Hartman, 37, pleaded guilty to theft by receiving stolen property and attempted possesion of another's ID documents, both class A misdemeanors. Hartman entered the pleas during an appearance Monday in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court.

Hartman will be sentenced Jan. 26.

Salt Lake County Sheriff's deputies said Hartman and Thomas Howard Anderson, 52, were arrested in possession of digital storage tapes that were stolen from the car of a storage company courier, who had left them in his car overnight in Kearns on June 1. The data tapes contained billing records, Social Security numbers and medical codes.

Anderson is scheduled to be arraigned on Dec. 29.

University Hospital officials said they did not believe that the personal information had been accessed, but offerred credit monitoring to some of its patients.

— Ben Winslow