LONGVIEW (AP) – An East Texas county has halted electronic fund transfers after cyber hackers believed to be in Russia allegedly stole $200,000 in tax-related funds. The Longview News-Journal reported Tuesday that Gregg County, state and federal authorities are investigating. Tax assessor\/collector Kirk Shields said Monday that local tax payments destined for schools and cities were hijacked. Shields says confirmation of Nov. 23 theft, discovered in progress and traced to a website in Moscow, has led to changes in the county’s method for moving funds. Thieves use malicious software, known as malware, to infect the computers of unsuspecting users by e-mail. Shields says a county employee who mistakenly unleashed the virus has been suspended for violating cyber-security policy. Efforts continue to retrieve the funds and identify the hackers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONGVIEW (AP) – An East Texas county has halted electronic fund transfers after cyber hackers believed to be in Russia allegedly stole $200,000 in tax-related funds. The Longview News-Journal reported Tuesday that Gregg County, state and federal authorities are investigating. Tax assessor\/collector Kirk Shields said Monday that local tax payments destined for schools and cities … Continue reading Cyber Theft of $200,000 from Gregg County<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 05:14:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57262"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57511,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57262\/revisions\/57511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}