Cyber Crime Settlement Anticipated

LONGVIEW — A distant trial date has been set for Gregg County�s tax assessor, who is asking jurors to hold him harmless in the Thanksgiving computer theft of $201,000 belonging to area cities and schools. However, a jury might never convene for the March 2012 trial in the County Court at Law No. 2, as county officials seek a settlement with the seven schools and cities that lost money in the cyber theft.

Attorney Robert Davis, representing Tax Assessor/Collector Kirk Shields, said Tuesday that all seven schools and cities had filed responses to his client�s Dec. 12 filing. Those responses are prescribed forms called general denials. Shields� filing technically is a lawsuit, though he has stressed he is �not suing anybody� and has to seek a declaratory judgment so he won�t be personally liable for the loss. His filing names as defendants the cities of Kilgore and White Oak, Kilgore College and the Longview, Kilgore, Sabine and Spring Hill school districts.

Those are the entities whose tax payments were lost when cyber thieves diverted some $600,000 in tax payments being electronically deposited to Texas Bank and Trust for distribution to the entities. The theft was discovered in time to recover all but one third of that amount. A criminal investigation into the theft is ongoing under direction of the U.S. Secret Service and a cyber detective with the Texas Department of Public Safety.