First, Greg Monroe phished the organization out of $50 million, and now, there’s even worse news for the Milwaukee Bucks and their players.
According to The Vertical’s Shams Charania, a security breach allowed the financial information of the team’s players to be released to an unknown hacker via email.
It’s going to make many question how, exactly, the financial security of professional teams is handled.
And it’s going to make fans continue to question the judgment of a team that signed Monroe to a 3-year, $50 million contract in 2015 only to have him become one of the NBA’s biggest disappointments.
The resurgent franchise sent an email to players Wednesday night, citing the issue of a “serious security incident.” As the team said, an unnamed employee released players’ 2015 IRS W-2 documents to a scam artist impersonating Peter Feigen, the Bucks team president. Also contained in the release: addresses, Social Security numbers, and compensation.
Per the report, the documents were requested via false email on April 26, but the Bucks did not discover the hack until May 16. The organization has notified the IRS, FBI, the NBA, and the players’ union for investigation.
The interesting piece here is how casually the financial department of the Bucks appears to have been run, given the extreme sensitivity of the released information. (Why would the team president request this information via email?)
With the new collective bargaining agreement talks just over a year away, the union will surely use this event as fuel, stoking fires of old speculations of financial irresponsibility among the franchises.
This full statement was released late Thursday afternoon:
Bucks Statement On Security Incident: pic.twitter.com/6RX309ws3L
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) May 19, 2016
Taking yet another (unofficial) loss, the Bucks (officially) finished the season out of the playoffs with a 33-49 record. They will pick 10th in this year’s top-heavy NBA Draft—there’s no word on who Dikembe Mutombo predicts they’ll draft.