Two business owners woke up, months apart, to find the same threatening message in their inboxes. Now both of them are in dire trouble.
Mat Paul, 43, who runs Crystal Creek Rainforest Retreat, a couples retreat in the state’s Northern Rivers region, was devastated at the end of November when he discovered his Instagram account had been hacked.
“When you read that it’s a bit of a panic. Is it real? Is it fake? Gradually it becomes a realisation [that it was indeed real],” Mr Paul told news.com.au.The dad-of-one runs a bird conservation not-for-profit, Feathered Friends Bird Sanctuary, the only one of its kind in NSW, with his 70,000 followers crucial for donations and attracting sponsors.
Mr Paul’s Crystal Creek Rainforest Retreat account still exists but with a creepy message on its bio that reads: “This account is held to be sold back to its owner”.“People now think our business has shut down because of Covid, not because our account has been hacked,” he told news.com.au. Like many small businesses, Mr Paul’s Crystal Creek Rainforest Retreat had struggled due to the state’s regional lockdowns and also border closures with nearby Queensland.Mr Wasan’s business had also been heavily impacted by the pandemic, having been shut down for 106 days during Sydney’s Delta variant-prompted lockdown. About half of his visitors used to be international tourists but, of course, they haven’t been able to come for the past two years.
“That money pays for all our threatened birds breeding programs. We don’t receive any government funding of any kind.”Mr Wasan cares for more than 300 birds from endangered species and says he has “huge overheads”, with it costing $2,122 a week just to feed his animals.“It is a concern that I have if we don’t fix it [the hack] quickly.”Ravi Wasan’s business was hacked over the weekend.
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