Pulaski County continues to try to straighten out an email hack that reportedly resulted in thousands of dollars in county funds being intercepted. “Back in May, if you don’t remember, we were the victim of a hack, of an email hack that caused two payments to be misdirected to the hacker, totaling about $22,000,” County Attorney Kevin Tankersley told the county council and commissioners last week.
While the county does have insurance against cyber attacks, the process of resolving the issue has been complicated. Tankersley said that with most of the county’s insurance policies, the insurance company hires an outside attorney to do most of the work. “I handled all of this for some reason,” Tankersley said. “I negotiated with both sides.”
The payments that were supposed to go to MPI Marketing were for tourism ads that the Community Development Commission ran on Chicago television. Tankersley said that under the agreement, the county will pay MPI $18,000, which will then be reimbursed by the insurance company. He also said MPI has agreed to cover his legal fees.
