Kelsy Matteson has operated the highly successful Escape Hour escape room in Gig Harbor for the past nine years. Last month, everything was put at risk when a hacker made his presence known.
“He said, ‘I’m going to get straight to the point; I need money,'” Matteson told KIRO Newsradio on Friday. “I just want to show you that I got your intellectual property. He had everything, the set-up of the experience, the props, the puzzles, the codes, everything. We were wondering how in the world he could have that.”
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Matteson said the hacker gained access to one of her email accounts and communicated hidden behind a VPN, making it nearly impossible to find him.
Matteson contacted Gig Harbor police and an investigation was launched, but Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey told KIRO Newsradio there wasn’t much they could do, so they turned the case over to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Matteson hopes IC-3, as it’s called, can track down the hacker, but she’s not optimistic and the stakes are high.
“You can sell escape rooms,” Matteson said. “So if that’s out there and everyone has it, that will literally take away our ability to ever sell it. So if we had to rebuild it, it would cost $40,000 to $50,000, but you also have to factor in the lost revenue. So the losses could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The hacker sent the stolen information to all of Escape Hour’s competitors, potentially giving them a competitive advantage.
“Intellectual property is a big deal, isn’t it, because we created all this and left it to our competitors … and what was kind of disheartening was, do you think any of our competitors called and told us they got this? They didn’t,” Matteson said.
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Anyone with information about the crime should contact the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, citing incident number 2416301851.2, or the Gig Harbor Police Department at 253-851-2236.
James Lynch is a reporter at KIRO Newsradio. Read more of James’ stories here. Follow James on Xor send him an email here.
