Afternoon News Brief

The investigation by State Police into the accident at West Main Street and Lewiston Roads continues today. According to police, a white vehicle was southbound on Lewiston Road, stopped at a light in the far left lane. A black car headed east on West Main Street crossed the centerline and both westbound lanes, striking the white vehicle. None of the four individuals sustained life-threatening injuries; three of them were taken by ambulance to Erie County Medical Center, the fourth, went via Mercy Flight helicopter. Anyone who witnessed the accident is asked to contact State Police.

Kelly Ashcraft

The 45-year-old woman who embezzled more than $105,000 from the Wyoming County Chamber of Commerce has been sentenced to prison. Kelly Ashcraft will up to seven years for grand larceny, forgery and falsifying business records. A 25-year order of protection has also been issued. Warsaw Village Police arrested Ashcraft in January pursuant to their investigation. The embezzlement started in 2018. She was well-known throughout Wyoming County for her Chamber of Commerce role, which included conducting ribbon cuttings at new and expanding businesses. She had also been honored in 2019 with Alan B. Goodenow Memorial Award for Citizen of the Year, which is awarded to a person who has shown outstanding commitment and service to the Warsaw community.

Genesee County Sheriffs are continuing their investigation this afternoon, into a one-vehicle accident on Lockport Road in Elba. Deputies tell us the male driver of a truck with a camping trailer in tow, swerved to avoid hitting an animal in the roadway. When he did, he drove off the shoulder of the road and struck a tree. The accident caused the camper to break apart and debris covered a wide area behind the truck. The driver needed to be extricated from the vehicle. He had non-life threatening injuries but was transported to Erie County Medical Center due to serious injury to his lower body and legs.

Lawmakers are back at the State Capitol today for a special session that was ordered by Governor Hochul. The governor is asking the Senate and Assembly to consider several pieces of legislation after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the State’s conceal carry weapons law. The country’s highest court said last week that the rules for granting concealed-carry permits to gun owners violated the U.S. Constitution. Governor Hochul has proposed several measures including a requirement that people who have a history of dangerous behavior be banned from getting a concealed-carry permit.

Letitia James

State Attorney General Letitia James says a lawsuit has been filed against several national gun distributors who she claims have fueled the gun crisis and put the safety of New Yorkers at risk. Attorney James says these distributors have sold thousands of illegal, unfinished frames and receivers that were later turned into untraceable weapons known as ghost guns. James says illegal guns don’t belong on the streets and that her office will use every tool necessary to root them out. This year hundreds of ghost guns have already been seized.

The Genesee County Sheriff’s Office and the Village of LeRoy Police Department will once again be participating in a coordinated effort with the STOP-DWI program to bring awareness to the dangers of impaired driving. The increased efforts across New York start tomorrow and continue through Tuesday, July 5th. Police have made great strides during previous holiday weekends in reducing the number of alcohol and drug related fatalities, still too many lives are being lost because of crashes caused by drunk or impaired drivers. Law enforcement reminds us that you can make a difference. Plan ahead to get a safe ride because impaired driving is completely preventable. Visit www.stopdwi.org for more information.

Mark Croce

Michael Capriotto

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on the helicopter crash that killed Buffalo developer Mark Croce and Orchard Park businessman Michael Capriotto. The agency says Croce was flying the aircraft from Maryland to Buffalo Niagara International Airport in January 2020 when the helicopter encountered turbulence over Pennsylvania. At one point the helicopter flipped upside down which resulted in the main rotor blade striking and slicing the tail of the aircraft and caused it to break apart in midair. The report also said that Croce was neither incapacitated nor impaired at the time of the tragedy.

Today Attorney General Letitia James secured $400,000 from Wegmans, for exposing the personal information of more than three million consumers nationwide, including 830,000 New Yorkers. The compromised data included usernames and passwords for Wegmans accounts, as well as customers’ names, email addresses, mailing addresses, and additional data derived from drivers’ license numbers. As a result of Attorney General James’ action, Wegmans is also required to upgrade its data security practices to protect consumers. In June 2021, Wegmans began notifying affected consumers whose personal information was compromised during the incident. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) determined that, in addition to failing to appropriately configure the cloud storage containers to limit access to its contents, at the time of the incident, Wegmans failed to inventory its cloud assets containing personal information, secure all user passwords, and regularly conduct security testing of its cloud assets. In addition, Wegmans maintained checksums derived from customers’ driver’s license numbers without a reasonable business purpose to maintain any form of driver’s license information indefinitely. Wegmans also failed to maintain long-term logs of its cloud assets, which made it difficult to investigate security incidents.
As a result of today’s agreement, Wegmans is required to pay New York $400,000 in penalties. In addition, Wegmans must adopt new measures to protect consumers’ personal information going forward, including:
• Maintaining a comprehensive information security program that includes regular updates to keep pace with changes in technology and security threats and reporting security risks to the company’s leadership;
• Maintaining appropriate asset management practices, including maintaining an inventory of all cloud assets;
• Establishing policies and procedures to ensure all cloud assets containing personal information have appropriate access controls to limit access to such information;
• Developing a penetration testing program that includes at least one annual comprehensive penetration test of Wegmans’ cloud environment;
• Implementing centralized logging and monitoring of cloud asset activity, including logs that are readily accessible for a period of at least 90 days and stored for at least one year from the date the activity was logged;
• Establishing appropriate password policies and procedures for customer accounts, including hashing stored passwords with a hashing algorithm and salting policy commensurate with NIST standards, encouraging customers to use strong passwords, educating customers on the benefits of multifactor authentication, and prohibiting password reuse;
• Maintaining a reasonable vulnerability disclosure program that allows third parties, such as security researchers, to disclose vulnerabilities;
• Establishing appropriate practices for customer account management and authentication, including notice, a security challenge, or re-authentication for account changes; and,
• Updating its data collection and retention practices, including only collecting a customer’s personal information when there is a reasonable business purpose for collection and deleting personal information when there is no longer a reasonable business purpose to retain such information — for information collected prior to the effective date of the agreement, Wegmans will permanently delete all personal information for which no reasonable purpose exists within 240 days of the effective date.