Sheriff, DCI investigating hacking complaint filed by Jolene Loetscher campaign

Sioux Falls mayoral candidate Jolene Loetscher filed complaints with Sioux Falls law enforcement Friday over what she says is a series of coordinated hacking attempts on her campaign and personal email, social media and bank accounts.

About two months after announcing her bid for the city's top job last September, Loetscher says she and her husband Nate Burdine have on numerous occasions been locked out of their online accounts and hacking attempts have been made on the campaign's website, email and social media accounts.

"At that time I decided to just focus on our campaign, hoping the suspicious activity would cease," Loetscher said after formally filing a complaint with the Minnehaha County Sheriff's Office. "Unfortunately it has only escalated."

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Sheriff Mike Milstead said in an email Monday the complaint was first brought to the attention of the Sioux Falls Police Department but was turned over to both his office and the Department of Criminal Investigations, agencies independent of city government.

"The Minnehaha County Sheriff's Office has taken the initial complaint information from the reporting parties, and both the MCSO and DCI started their investigation into these concerns," he said.

Loetscher said about every account her campaign operates has been impacted by some form of attempted tampering. It started with the "LetsGoJo" Twitter and Instagram accounts in November 2017. A few weeks later her secured Wi-Fi was entered by someone without authorization, and in February the login for her campaign bank account was changed, causing her to be locked out for a time.

She said she expected a high level of scrutiny when she got into the race, but never expected it to make her a target for identity thieves.

"I welcome tough questions," Loetscher said. "What no candidate for office, particularly here in Sioux Falls, should ever have to worry about is having their family’s online activity threatened."

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Milstead said after fielding the complaint, investigators began reaching out to other candidates who'd been in the race for mayor and learned others have reported similar problems during their campaigns dating back to 2017. At one point, there were seven candidates in the race.

Of those reached Monday morning, only Kenny Anderson Jr. said he suspected he, too, was victim to hacking attempts during the campaign.

"I had problems with receiving emails. It worked for a while and then they stopped coming through," he said. "The address would change for the people sending them."

Loetscher will face Paul TenHaken in next week's runoff election