Ashley Madison Hack Leading to Suicides?

Fallout from the Ashley Madison hack continues this week, as the company behind the website – a dating site specifically designed to facilitate cheating on your spouse – offers a reward of $500,000 Canadian dollars for any info that leads to the arrest of the hackers responsible.

 

Toronto Police Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans held a press conference announcing the reward Monday morning, saying “Team Impact, I want to make it very clear to you. Your actions are illegal and we will not tolerate it.” He referred to it as one of the largest data breaches in the world.

 

Toronto Police also sent out a tweet this morning saying that, according to “unconfirmed reports,” the Ashley Madison hack had been the cause of two suicides. That’s on top of reports from Friday of last week in which a city of San Antonio employee who was found in the Ashley Madison database committed suicide. It’s unclear if the two situations are related.

 

Evans also said that there have been reports of blackmailers threatening Ashley Madison users with the release of their names, unless they made payoffs in the crypto-currency Bitcoin.

 

Journalists scanning through the Ashley Madison user list are still finding more names of notable people, including Islamic preacher Hamza Andreas Tzortzis and Florida Sate Attorney Jeff Ashton.