Peter Meiszner says he found folders filled with photocopies of passports, cheques from a travel company in his building

A man in Vancouver is shocked after he says he stumbled upon a garbage bin filled with others' personal documents

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver man is shocked after finding some sensitive documents in his building’s garbage bins.

Peter Meiszner said he was taking out some recycling on Thursday night when he saw some file folders in the bin and got curious.

“So I opened one of them up, one of the first pages that I saw was somebody’s passport,” he told NEWS 1130. “So a photocopy of the passports, cheques.”

He believes the documents may have been dumped by a tour company in his building.

As a past victim of identity theft, Meiszner said he can’t imagine why a company would be so lax with its customer’s information.

Hey local Vancouver tour company… this is how identities are stolen. You can’t simply dump hundreds, possibly thousands of cheques, copies of passports and other personal and financial info in a building recycling bin!! Unreal! pic.twitter.com/Rn9eFglsbU — Peter Meiszner (@PeterMeiszner) July 26, 2019

“Having my debit card copied and my checking account drained last year,” he recalled. “This is how these things happen. Obviously, I was very shocked to see that and wondered what happened there — what decision-making process was happening inside that organization?”

Meiszner didn’t remove the documents and said on Friday morning they were still there.

“I feel uncomfortable touching them, I don’t want to take them out of the bin,” he explained.

“There’s got to be thousands of pages in there. Almost the whole bin is full.”

He said he did try to get in touch with police shortly after stumbling upon the documents, but was unable to get through.

Meiszner doesn’t know if the company is even aware of the situation. He chose not to name the company online.