Breach filing
ArchivedSpencer's Gifts LLC Flexible Benefits and Welfare Benefit Plans: 10,023 individuals, Jan 2022.
Spencer's Gifts LLC Flexible Benefits and Welfare Benefit Plans reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 24 January 2022. The filing records the organisation as a health plan in New Jersey and lists 10,023 individuals affected, which makes it the 67th largest of the 174 New Jersey filings on the register and the 332nd largest of the 718 filings submitted nationally in 2022. Among the 27 New Jersey filings made in 2022 it ranks 7th.
Individuals affected
10,023
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$1.60M
Method shown, not disclosed
Rank in NJ
67th
of 174 New Jersey filings
Rank in 2022
332nd
of 718 filings nationally
Section F.1 / The filing
As posted by HHS OCR
Every value below is the portal's own field for this filing, plus its rank within the register.
- Covered entity type
- Health Plan
- Individuals affected
- 10,023
- Breach submission date
- 24 January 2022
- Submission year
- 2022
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Network Server
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in New Jersey by size
- 67th of 174
- Rank in 2022 nationally
- 332nd of 718
- New Jersey median filing
- 5,727 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- NJ-20220124-spencers-gifts-flexible-benefits-and-wel
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in New Jersey and in 2022
OCR classifies the incident as a hacking or IT incident, with the breached information held in a network server. Hacking/IT Incident is the type recorded on 119 of the 174 New Jersey filings (68%) and on 79% of all filings submitted in 2022. Network Server is the most common location in the state, appearing on 57% of New Jersey filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 27% of New Jersey filings do involve one. At 10,023 individuals the breach is 1.8 times the New Jersey median filing of 5,727 and 2.5 times the national median of 4,000 across all 7,884 filings. It sits in the 10,000 to 99,999 band, which holds 1,938 filings.
As of 28 August 2026 the case is listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive. OCR's closing summary of the case is reproduced in full below.
New Jersey's breach notification statute (N.J. Stat. 56:8-161 et seq.) requires notice to affected residents within 30 days of reasonably determining a breach occurred (7 days for social-media-platform breaches). Its attorney general threshold: all breaches (Division of Consumer Affairs and State Police). The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule ran alongside it: notice to affected individuals and to HHS without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovery, which is the clock that put this filing on the portal.
Multiplying 10,023 individuals by IBM's $160 customer-PII cost per record (Cost of a Data Breach 2025, the figure the site's calculator uses) gives a modelled $1.60M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $1.92M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Spencer's Gifts LLC Flexible Benefits and Welfare Benefit Plans. For scale, IBM's 2026 average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M, so this filing models at 0.3 times the sector average.
Section F.3 / OCR closing summary
The portal's archived description, in full
Written by the Office for Civil Rights when the case was closed and reproduced verbatim from the HHS export.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced a settlement with Spencer Gifts LLC Flexible Benefits and Welfare Benefit Plans (the Plan), the employer-sponsored group health plan of Spencer Gifts LLC, a national retail company, over potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules.
OCR enforces the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules (HIPAA Rules), which set forth the requirements that covered entities (health plans, health care clearinghouses, and most health care providers), and business associates (collectively, regulated entities) must follow to protect the privacy and security of protected health information (PHI). The risk analysis provision of the HIPAA Security Rule requires regulated entities to conduct an accurate and thorough assessment of the potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic PHI (ePHI) held by those organizations.
The settlement resolves an investigation that OCR initiated after the Plan filed a breach report on January 24, 2022. The Plan had received employee complaints that employees were unable to connect to the virtual private network. The Plan discovered that in November 2021, an unauthorized actor accessed the company's network and deployed ransomware, encrypting data on the company's systems, including servers storing the Plan's PHI, and demanding a ransom. The PHI of 10,023 individuals was potentially affected by the breach, including health plan members' names, addresses, zip codes, phone numbers, email addresses, and Social Security numbers. OCR found that the Plan had potentially violated provisions of the Privacy and Security Rules, including:
Failing to conduct an accurate and thorough risk analysis to determine the potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI held by the Plan prior to the breach incident; and
Failing to implement reasonable and appropriate policies and procedures to comply with the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules prior to the breach incident.
Under the terms of the resolution, the Plan paid $450,000 and agreed to a two-year corrective action plan monitored by OCR.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
10,023 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
ModelledIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$1.60M
10,023 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$1.92M
10,023 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Spencer's Gifts LLC Flexible Benefits and Welfare Benefit Plans to HHS, multiplied by IBM's customer-PII cost per record (Cost of a Data Breach 2025 Figure 6 and the 2026 edition). No cost has been disclosed by the entity for this filing; the figure is a planning estimate, not a fact about the breach. IBM's per-record figures come from mid-volume breaches and IBM cautions against applying them to breaches involving millions of records; the site's per-record page explains where the multiplication holds and where it breaks down.
Context: IBM's average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M in the 2026 report ($7.42M in 2025); the global average across all sectors was $4.44M in 2025.
Cost per record: method and limits / Healthcare breach cost, IBM 2026
Section F.6 / Notification clock
New Jersey statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
New Jersey: N.J. Stat. 56:8-161 et seq.
- Notice to individuals
- Within 30 days of reasonably determining a breach occurred (7 days for social-media-platform breaches)
- Attorney general threshold
- All breaches (Division of Consumer Affairs and State Police) (Before individual notifications are sent)
- Private right of action
- Yes: Direct PROA under the Consumer Fraud Act for ascertainable losses, including treble damages
- Penalty
- $10,000 first offense, $20,000 per subsequent offense; treble damages and fees for private plaintiffs
The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule runs alongside the state statute: notice to affected individuals and to HHS without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovery.
Section F.7 / Peer filings
New Jersey filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among New Jersey filings in 2022, topped up from other years where 2022 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allaire Healthcare Group | Healthcare Provider | 13,148 | 17 May 2022 | |||
| Optum Medical Care of New Jersey, P.C. | Healthcare Provider | 12,499 | 30 Sep 2022 | |||
| Saddlebrook Anesthesia Services PC | Healthcare Provider | 9,596 | 24 Oct 2022 | |||
| SERV Behavioral Health Systems, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 8,110 | 9 Sep 2022 |
Index / Companion schedules
13 HHS breach register
→Hub: every filing, by state, year and entity.
04 Biggest breaches
→Mega-breaches with primary-source cost figures.
Industry / Healthcare
→IBM 2026: $6.64M average, 13 years at #1.
Regulation / HIPAA penalties
→OCR enforcement tiers and the 60-day rule.
11 50-state laws
→Deadline, AG threshold and penalties per state.
Cost / Per record
→Where the per-record model is reliable.
Provenance
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, Breach Portal (breaches affecting 500 or more individuals), retrieved 2026-08-28. Public domain. Individuals affected and dates as reported by the covered entity.
Portal: ocrportal.hhs.gov breach report. Statutory basis: HITECH Act section 13402(e)(4): the Secretary must post a list of breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals. Breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals are reported to OCR annually and are not posted, so they are not on this register. Status wording follows the portal's two tabs ("Cases Currently Under Investigation" and "Archive") as of 28 August 2026; a filing moves to the archive when OCR closes the case. Modelled costs on this site are a method applied to the reported count, using IBM Cost of a Data Breach per-record figures, and are never a cost disclosed by the entity. This row: hhs-breach-archive__2026-08-28.csv, export row 2689.
Corrections: if you represent a listed entity and the portal row has been amended, email [email protected] with the portal entry and we will re-pull the export.