Attorney General Tong Leads $2.3 Million Multistate Settlement with LabCorp Over the American Medical Collection Agency Data Breach

09/24/2026

(Hartford, CT) -- Attorney General Tong today led a coalition of 44 attorneys general announcing a $2.3 million multistate settlement with the Laboratory Corporation of America (“Labcorp”), resolving an investigation into the 2019 data breach at Labcorp’s debt collector, Retrieval-Masters Creditors Bureau d/b/a American Medical Collection Agency (“AMCA”). The AMCA breach potentially exposed the personal information of over 27.5 million individuals throughout the United States, including 10.2 million Labcorp patients of which 43,666 are Connecticut residents. The multistate coalition settled with AMCA in 2021 after the company’s bankruptcy petition was dismissed.

While the data breach occurred at AMCA, the data involved was the sensitive data of Labcorp’s patients. While companies can contract with vendors freely and delegate authority, data security is a non-delegable duty. Vendor management remains one of the most challenging areas in cybersecurity, but it is critical that businesses properly vet their vendors and ensure that information shared with those vendors will be kept secure.

“Labcorp outsourced their debt collection, and they shared sensitive personal information for millions of patients that was ultimately compromised. Labcorp was responsible for vetting and managing that vendor, and we’re holding them accountable,” said Attorney General Tong.

Today’s settlement stands for the premise that HIPAA-covered entities have a duty to protect personal and protected health information and oversee vendors entrusted with that information. The settlement provides strong requirements around vendor management, especially medical debt collection including:

• Developing certain aspects of the company’s information security program, such as an incident response plan that includes internal reporting of vendor security events;

• Minimizing the sharing of data with vendors while balancing certain needs of debt collectors to meet their legal obligations;

• Expanding the vendor risk management program to include requiring a dedicated team, employing tools to evaluate vendors, and verifying vendor compliance;

• Adding specific requirements for debt collectors as a specialized subset of vendors, including maintaining contract inventories, enforcing cybersecurity standards through contract, segmenting data which is often aggregated by debt collectors for multiple clients, and requiring debt collectors to perform assessments and audits, and including the right of termination for non-compliance; and

• Hiring a Third-Party Assessor to perform an information security assessment with a focus on vendor risk management.

As part of the settlement, Labcorp will make a payment of $2,287,455.00 to the states of which $81,296.00 is payable to Connecticut. This settlement will supplement a multistate settlement with AMCA itself which included a $21,000,000 suspended payment due to its bankruptcy. Separately Labcorp has agreed to a $35,000,000 settlement in the related class action lawsuit, which is still ongoing with other AMCA client covered entities.

The Attorneys General of Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas led the investigation, assisted by the Executive Committee of the Attorneys General of Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The Attorneys General of Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and West Virginia joined today’s settlement.

Assistant Attorneys General John Neumon and Jordan Levin and Deputy Associate Attorney General Michele Lucan, Chief of the Privacy Section assisted the Attorney General in this matter.

Twitter: @AGWilliamTong

Facebook: CT Attorney General

Media Contact:

Elizabeth Benton
elizabeth.benton@ct.gov

Consumer Inquiries:

860-808-5318
attorney.general@ct.gov

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.