BOUNCED CHECKS
Mayor Knowles got two calls on Aug. 21. The highway patrol called first. The officer thought Knowles’ personal information was posted online.
Then Knowles’ mother called. She had gotten at least four calls warning of the barrage to come.
Knowles told his father to sign up for LifeLock, a protection service. Before the day was done, the company, which monitors the use of clients’ names and Social Security numbers, had contacted the family with a credit application in his father’s name.
The next day, there were three more. Two, the following day. Then two more. And so on.
The hackers accessed the Knowleses’ bank accounts, changed passwords, emails and home addresses. They changed the Knowleses’ home phone number — a number they’ve had for 35 years. They set up credit cards, cellphones, home loans.
“Why would somebody do that?” his father asked.
But the $16,000 brought Patti Knowles to tears. The money was pulled from their business accounts — they own a heating and cooling company — and the temporary loss (the bank refunded the cash) led to bounced checks, included one to the IRS for business taxes.
The bank declined to say whether the checks were cashed.
The data leaks led to other problems, too. Someone, for instance, broke into a house they owned, tore out some piping and left water pouring into the basement. Knowles’ father found the house in 6 inches of standing water. The basement — two bedrooms, a full bath and family room — had to be gutted.
But the most frustrating moment for Knowles’ father came at the start of October. His wife noticed they hadn’t gotten any recent LifeLock notices.
When he tried to call, the company wouldn’t let him into this own accounts. Someone, it seemed, had broken into LifeLock, too.
“I pay you money to protect my stuff,” Knowles’ father said. “And you get hacked?”
A spokeswoman for LifeLock declined to comment.
Knowles was irritated, calling the Anonymous actions criminal. Still, the mayor seemed to have had largely evaded the same fate.
Until a few days ago.
“Excuse me Mr. Mayor,” OpFerguson tweeted Tuesday, “the communications director wanted me to tell you, “Anonymous just leaked your credit card data.”
Anonymous emailed late Saturday that the tweet was a joke.
For now.
