Grafton Town Computers Allegedly Tampered With

by Alex Brooks
Grafton Deputy Town Supervisor Cathy Goyer called the State Police on Thursday, May 31, after a series of incidents involving the Town computers. There has been no physical break-in, but things have been added and subtracted from several different Town computers over a period of months, and most recently a set of computer discs was taken. [private]Goyer said it might be someone who has a key to the Town Hall, but neither she nor the police investigator have any idea who it is or why they are doing these things.
The earliest incident took place on Martin Luther King Day. Some entries were made by some unauthorized person on a laptop in the Supervisor’s office that contains the Town’s financial files.
Another incident involved a computer used primarily by the Highway Superintendent. Something was done which rendered it unusable. It cannot be restarted and some data has been lost. The computer is not used very often, so it is not clear exactly when that happened, but Goyer said she thinks it was in March.
More recently, some files were deleted from the computer used by the Town Assessor, Craig Surprise. He had to call computer people from the State to get his programs working properly again. They came out to Grafton on May 21 and, in addition to getting the computer working again, determined that the files were deleted on Monday afternoon May 14 between 3:30 and 5 in the afternoon. That was on the day of Grafton’s last Town Board meeting. No data was lost in this incident.
The last incident happened in the final week of May. All of the CDs containing the information about the Town’s FEMA jobs disappeared from the Town Hall. The paper sleeves were left, but the disks themselves are gone. The data was backed up, according to Goyer, so the Town’s information was not lost.
When Goyer discovered that these CDs were missing, she called the State Police and asked them to investigate. A trooper came out on Thursday and filed a report. State Police Investigator Jeff Scholz was assigned to the case, and he came out on Monday, June 4, to examine the computers and interview people at Town Hall.
Scholz has asked anyone who may have information about any of these incidents to call him at 279-4427.
Goyer said she had all the locks on the Town Hall changed on Wednesday, June 6. She also said the Town is looking into getting a security camera, or several, for the building. For now, the question of who is tampering with the Town’s computers and why remains a mystery.[/private]