The personal information of thousands of current and former Fort Wayne Community Schools employees was found on a man arrested on forgery and counterfeiting charges, school officials and police said Wednesday.

Steven Brown, arrested Sept. 17 by Fort Wayne police, was found with a life insurance document that included the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other information of every FWCS employee who received those benefits in 2004, FWCS spokeswoman Krista Stockman said.

The document was a quarterly report sent from The Terrell Co., the term life insurance broker, to North American Benefits Co. detailing participants in the FWCS program.

Current FWCS employees were notified of the breach via e-mail Wednesday afternoon. Officials are working to find the addresses of any retired or former employees who worked in the district in 2004 to send them letters of notification, Stockman said.

FWCS officials were notified by police late Tuesday, Stockman said. Police do not believe the information was used to steal anyone’s identity, but school officials are encouraging employees who have had their identity stolen in the last four years to notify police to see whether there is a connection, Stockman said.

FWCS employees are also being encouraged to closely monitor their credit reports.

"We do want people to be aware this is something that could happen anywhere, anytime," Stockman said. "Monitoring your credit report is important, whether you know about something like this or not.

"This isn’t something that happened because of something that Fort Wayne Community Schools did. We did not lose the information. It was not a breach on our part. We simply found out there was a breach and wanted to make sure people were aware."

For more on this story, see Thursday's print editions of The Journal Gazette or visit www.journalgazette.net after 7 a.m. Thursday.

ksoderlund@jg.net