DraftKings Users Hacked, Funds Taken From Account

Justin White was on vacation in New York Sunday night when his wife, Lisa, noticed something going on in the couple’s bank account. On the bank’s app, you’ve seen five consecutive withdrawals of $500.

White, a 40-year-old from Tennessee, was dumbfounded. It was coming from “DRAFTKINGS INC. Boston, Massachusetts”.

“He was withdrawing it from my bank card, which I used for deposits,” White said.

White panicked.

He went to his DraftKings account. He has tried logging in three times. I closed it. Request a new password. DraftKings said it sent him a text message to the number on file.

That’s when he realized he was definitely hacked. They changed his phone number so he couldn’t come back.

He looked up a customer service number for DraftKings.

He couldn’t find one. There was a link to click on for a live chat. She said she took him to another page that wasn’t a live chat. He was asked to fill out a form and I promised to get back to him.

Went to DK_Assist on Twitter, Customer Service page and saw this message. At least one response appears to be from a hacker, telling people how to do this and shouting “Free money!”

“Not only did I not get access to anyone, but you have the gloating hackers,” White said.

When White went to his email to see if he could see evidence of the withdrawal; His email to DraftKings was full of spam.

“They had 500 to 600 emails in there to hide their withdrawals,” White said.

Paul Lieberman, co-founder of DraftKings, told Action Network in a statement that nearly $300,000 in customer funds were affected, but they intend to “make any customer fully impacted.”

“We currently believe that these customers’ login information was hacked on other websites and then used to access their DraftKings accounts where they used the same login information,” Lieberman said. “We have seen no evidence that DraftKings’ systems were violated to obtain this information.”

Rocky Anderson, a 35-year-old commercial mortgage lender from Kansas, was watching his beloved Chiefs football on Sunday Night Football when he saw the email come in: $437 had been withdrawn from his DraftKings account.

He was insulted when he saw that a hacker had tried to get a cut check for a Houston apartment, but the check was in Anderson’s name. Anderson took to Twitter and sent details of the transaction to the Houston Police Department.

“I’ve been to Houston twice in my life,” Anderson said half-jokingly, “and it might be the third time I’ve met this guy.”

On Sunday night, Alvin Byers, a 31-year-old banking consultant in Colorado, was informed that he had made a $5 deposit into his Draft King account. A minute later, he said he received an email that wiped his entire account.

Byers went to his account and entered his email, password, and two-factor authentication.

“They said they sent a code to a number ending in 8687, which isn’t my number,” Byers said. “So while my password wasn’t changed, my phone number was.”

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Byers was able to email DraftKings, and the company acknowledged that his account had been frozen.

White, Anderson and Byers say the episode will force them to give their business to someone else.

“I feel like I’m the exact person that DraftKings is targeting,” Anderson said. “I do every batch and take a break in hopes of making a little money on the weekends. Once this is over, I’m going to check it all out.”

For White, it’s also about principle.

“I can’t deal with a company that doesn’t have a clear customer service hotline,” White said. “I didn’t think it was possible with a company of this size.”

Shea Curran, 35, of Denver was watching a Chiefs game on Sunday when he received an email saying there was a request to withdraw $4,500 in his account.

His password hadn’t been changed somehow, so he was able to log in and stop the checkout.

“But then I thought maybe I should change my password, and that’s when I noticed that the two-factor authentication went to a phone number that wasn’t mine,” he said.

Curran said recent events have suddenly made him more skeptical of digital accounts.

“When you think about the money in an account that you trust and then something like FTX happens, it changes you a little bit,” Curran said.