The life of a Houston business owner has been threatened after cyber-criminals hacked into her company's social media account and posted racist messages.
Founder and CEO of Infinity Diagnostics Center Jessica Hatch said her company's Instagram account was compromised on Thursday afternoon by an unknown malicious hacker. After gaining access to the account, the threat actor uploaded multiple stories designed to paint Hatch and her business as racist.
"Here at Infinity we do not support African Americans. If we kept them picking cotton we wouldn't be having these issues with them," read one of the malicious posts.
Hatch said that the business has employed African Americans on a regular basis and that it, in fact, currently employs an African American massage therapist.
Another offensive story uploaded to Infinity's Instagram account included the text “We do not employ African American individuals. The things going on right now is a clear example that they do not know how to behave."
As a result of the attack, Hatch received a stream of hateful comments and death threats from misguided Instagram users who believed the vile comments had come from the business owner.
"It's just horrible," Hatch told Click2Houson.com. "Like I feel like I'm literally being attacked."
After learning about the racist posts, a completely mortified Hatch asked Instagram to close down the account.
Hatch said she personally has not had access to the company's Instagram account for at least six weeks.
Commenting on who she believes is responsible for the attack, Hatch said she believed the culprit was a former employee whose responsibilities used to include publishing social media posts on behalf of the business. Hatch said that to perform their role, the ex-staffer had access to the company's social media passwords.
Hatch made the following plea to the former employee: “Just come forth and say, ‘I’m sorry. I did not think it was going to go to this extreme. I was mad at you.’ Let people know that you did it and I did not."
Since the death threats were made, the Houston Police Department has been checking in on Hatch and the business. An investigation into the hack is ongoing.