Rep. Moffitt Twitter hacking case now in hands of the APD

The alleged hacking of Rep. Tim Moffitt’s Twitter account in September is now being investigated by the Asheville Police Department “because of the abilities of our cyber crime unit.” The case was originally reported to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office.

On Sept. 19, Moffitt’s official Twitter account sent out a highly unusual and offensive message: “They should lock up all the gays on their own island. Except for the lesbians. Y’all can have them!” Moffitt claimed that his account was hacked. The incident fueled speculation about who was behind the tweet, and Moffitt blamed political opponents. He later told Xpress reporters at a local forum that he had reported the incident to Twitter as well as to law enforcement.

On Oct. 17, the APD denied it was investigating the case, claiming it was still in the hands of the sheriff’s office, who did not reply when later asked to confirm if this was so.

However, this morning Lt. Randy Sorrells of the sheriff’s office told Xpress that the case is now in the APD’s hands, something Sgt. Michael Lamb later confirmed.

“We were requested to investigate because of the abilities of our cyber crime unit,” Lamb wrote in an email to Xpress. “We just received the case and have no new information at this point.”

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3 thoughts on “Rep. Moffitt Twitter hacking case now in hands of the APD

  1. tatuaje

    So it’s taken almost 2 months for any investigation to even commence?!

    I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that it’s election season. /sarcasm

  2. Sean

    Unless someone hacked Moffitt’s computer and stole the credentials or used an existing login there and the APD has access to that computer there’s not much they can investigate. They could serve a subpoena to twitter to investigate their servers, but other than that, don’t see this going very far.

  3. sharpleycladd

    What! Rep Moffitt does not believe in gay islands sans lesbians? People better change their votes!

    I figured one of his civil engineering headhunter firms wanted to get into the gay-island-building business . . . he doesn’t say or do anything for sound public policy reasons. It’s all gayola – er, payola – with some people.

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