HOUSTON -- You work hard to keep your private information safe from identity thieves, but what happens when someone trusted with that data just throws it in the trash?

Local 2 Investigates got a call from a restaurant owner who found what would be an identity thief's dream tossed in her trashcan. What we uncovered has triggered an investigation by the Texas Attorney General's Office.

"I was shocked," said Cora Walters, owner of Compadre's restaurant in the Montgomery County town of Oak Ridge North. "Just throwing peoples' lives out in the garbage; and they certainly have the right to know this is going on."

Walters said last month one diner caught the attention of her staff.

"He was an odd character, behaving oddly," said Walters. "He had probably, I want to say, 50 manila envelopes, files covering a whole table that would seat six people."

Walters said just before the man left the restaurant, her staff noticed he made a stop behind the server's counter.

"He dumped a file in the waste basket behind the server counter, so I went back there and took it out," said Walters.

Inside those files was an incredible amount of personal, confidential information: Social Security numbers, copies of driver's licenses, home addresses, work addresses, annual salaries, phone numbers, credit histories, loan applications and dates of birth.

"There's one individual whose mother is a co-signer. Her information is in here," said Walters.

Walters knows it is illegal to dump that kind of personal information where anyone has access to it because she's a retired detective who's married to the town's police chief. Walters handed over the documents to the police and called Local 2 Investigates.

"I was embarrassed for these people," said Walters.

An alert staff member jotted down the license plate to the man's truck as he drove off. Also, some of the dumped paperwork included a state of Texas vehicle registration renewal form that matched the license plate jotted down by a restaurant employee. Both the license plate number and the registration renewal form show the owner of the car to be Timothy Everett Acker.

After seeing the documents, Local 2 did a little digging of its own. Turns out, Acker is a repo man for several car dealerships in our area. Local 2 tried to catch up with Acker at an address he listed as his home, but a handy man told us the house had been vacant for about three weeks.

"We finally talked to Acker on the phone. He didn't want to talk with us on camera. He admitted to throwing the documents away, but he says it was an accident. Acker says while he was eating, he accidentally spilled egg all over himself and the paperwork and, in his haste to clean himself up, he didn't think about disposing of those documents properly," Arnold reported.

"I think he's a liar," Walters said.

After hearing Acker's explanation, we talked to Walters again.

"There was no spilling of anything. I immediately got the papers out of the trash-- there was nothing. They weren't wet. They hadn't been cleaned," said Walters.

There are more questions about some of that paperwork. Since Acker is a repo man, that explains why he would have the documents to track down owners who did not pay their car notes.

Except when Local 2 spoke with two of the people listed in the paperwork, one told us he never got the car because his loan application was denied. Another woman said she never had her car repossessed.

Local 2 then contacted the dealerships listed on the documents: Dixon Motors, Rapido Motor Company and R&M Suzuki. Officials at all three dealerships declined our requests for interviews, but all said they are now no longer using Acker to repossess cars and thanked us for letting them know this happened. Two of the dealerships have also launched internal investigations.

As for Acker, he said he always disposes of confidential documents properly and what happened at Compadres was just an embarrassing accident.

"He's still responsible for that paperwork," said Walters.

Local 2 contacted all the people listed in those documents. None wanted to speak with us on camera but all said they will be watching their accounts closely. We also contacted the Texas Attorney General's Office, which is charged with enforcing the law regarding the safe-guarding and destruction of personal information. After our call the AG's Office immediately sent an employee to pick up those documents and launched its own investigation.

This is not Acker's first brush with the law. Harris County records show he pleaded guilty to bank robbery in the 70's and pleaded guilty again in the 90's for violation of the private investigators and security act.