PONTE VEDRA BEACH — Luna Lopez, a candidate for U.S. Congress for Florida’s 4th District, claims to be the victim of political intimidation, financial cybercrimes, and hacking perpetrated by a political consultant with ties to Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and Representative John Rutherford (R-Fla.).
Lopez, 35, a constitutional Republican running for the congressional seat currently held by former Duval County Sheriff John Rutherford, says she believes political consultant Tim Baker, who presently works for Rutherford and has consulted extensively for Curry in the past, is behind a number of cyberattacks against her family, including a hack of her and her husband’s credit that prevented the couple from closing on a new house.
Shortly after they discovered the hack, Lopez received an anonymous e-mail that read “I am sorry to hear about your new home. Good luck on your race.”
Lopez explains that the attacks began with a hack of the Signal app on her cellphone. Her husband, Ryan, received e-mails from an unidentified sender with screenshots of her conversations within the app that she had with a candidate for office in another state. The candidate, who is supporting Lopez, received similar messages. The sender was trying to make it appear that Lopez was having an inappropriate relationship with the other candidate in an effort to make him end his support for Lopez.
Lopez then began receiving anonymous e-mails of her travel records in which the sender claimed these trips were not actually campaign-related, but extramarital affairs.
The e-mails took on a new dimension when the sender began indicating that he had access to Lopez’s private medical records.
Soon after, Lopez began receiving spam submissions on her campaign website contact form, ostensibly from women who found Ryan attractive.
The content of these contact form messages led Lopez to realize that whoever was behind them had seen her personally at functions, as they described where her husband had been sitting and what he had been wearing.
“You better be careful, there are vultures out there,” read the last message that came in before Lopez disabled the messaging function on her website.
One day, Ryan received a call on his personal cellphone in which the caller merely said “good luck in the race” before hanging up. The number had several zeros. Lopez’s carrier looked at the forensic records and said the number had been rerouted to Washington, D.C.
Things reportedly went quiet for some time until shortly before the Lopezes were set to close on a new home. Their lender called and said Ryan’s FICO score dropped 115 points and was locked to where no improvement could be made.
The lender told the Lopezes he had seen this phenomenon happen before to another client who was also a political candidate. After learning about yet another candidate, one from California, who had a similar experience, Lopez began to search for more cases. She ultimately discovered a Reddit thread of congressional candidates who had passed through the same situation.
The day after Ryan’s FICO score dropped, Lopez found that her credit had been red-flagged. The lender said they had only seen such a situation when someone has been suspected of committing identity fraud. The circumstance now places the Lopez family in danger of not being able to obtain housing anywhere.
It was the following day that Lopez received the e-mail alluding to her housing situation, something she says no one other than she, her husband, and her lender knew about.
“That’s when I knew this was an attack,” Lopez says. “They were taunting me.”
Days later, Lopez received another anonymous e-mail that read “perhaps you should consider running in a different district where homes are easier to purchase and life is simpler and less complicated.”
Lopez says authorities tend to not take people seriously with regard to cybercrimes unless there are explicit threats of bodily harm. As a result, she set out to do her own investigative research, which led to her receiving a tip that led back to Baker.
According to SunBiz, Baker is associated with a firm named Data Targeting Research, which in the first financial quarter of 2021 alone received $25,000 from Rutherford’s campaign committee, according to FEC records.
Baker has previously been under public scrutiny for his role last year in assisting the failed attempt of NextEra Energy to purchase electricity provider JEA, a role that came to light after he was subpoenaed by the Jacksonville City Council.
The Florida Times-Union reported at the time:
The revelation that Baker and [fellow lobbyist Sam] Mousa worked for NextEra raises a number of questions, including whether Baker was offering policy advice to JEA while working for the company considered to be the front-runner to win the competition to buy the city-owned utility.
The Times-Union has revealed Baker provided advice to JEA officials during a private meeting in 2019 and that JEA’s now-fired leader Aaron Zahn tried to hire him to help with his controversial and costly attempt to sell JEA. Baker also sat in on a secret meeting last July, when JEA officials discussed their then-confidential plans to privatize the utility.
The Times-Union also revealed a consulting firm co-founded by Baker and Mousa paid for a secret trip to Atlanta to watch a playoff baseball game they attended with Zahn, Mayor Lenny Curry and City Council President Scott Wilson. Zahn has said he reimbursed the consulting firm $750, which is likely less than his portion of the trip’s actual cost.
“This is why it’s so difficult for We the People to get into office,” Lopez concluded about her ordeal. “The establishment has incredible levels of money and access, and they weaponize them to crush political outsiders.”
Learn more about Luna Lopez at www.LunaLopezForCongress.com
