INDIANAPOLIS -- The state attorney general's office intends to examine business documents that contained personal information and were found in a large trash bin, Call 6 for Help's Rafael Sanchez reported.

Employees of the former Telesource telemarketing company said they found piles of records that included employees' and consumers' personal information in the trash bin on Indianapolis' south side.

The employees said Telesource had been bought by another company, Vekstar, earlier in the year, and that Telesource's former office at U.S. 31 and Shelby Street was being cleaned out.

The records in the trash bin included names, Social Security numbers and addresses, Sanchez reported. Susan Kline, an employment law attorney, said a 2005 federal law requires businesses to destroy personal information in a manner beyond just tossing it into a trash bin.

"When it goes out of the possession of the employer, it needs to be destroyed in some way that it can not be re-created," Kline said.

The people who found the documents intend to give them to the attorney general's office, Sanchez reported. Under a new state law geared at combating identity theft, companies must contact people if their personal information is deemed to have been compromised.

In a statement written on behalf of Vekstar, attorney Rodger K. Hendershot said Telesource left the records when it ceased operations and vacated the Shelby Street office. The statement said Vekstar purchased assets from Telesource, but Vekstar did not purchase the abandoned records.

The statement said abandoned documents that were "identifiable as sensitive in nature" were shredded.

"All other files that were not readily identifiable as sensitive in nature were thrown in a trash dumpster to be disposed. Any employee records that were inadvertently discarded were records that had previously been abandoned by Telesource and were not the property of Vekstar," the statement said.