• By JASON BROWN
• Acadiana bureau
• Published: Dec 28, 2009

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Faced with paying out tens of thousands of dollars in fines and penalties, George Sheen Jr. made a tough — but calculated — decision last year to stop accepting debit cards and credit cards at Jones Creek Café and Oyster Bar.

The decision came after cyber criminals out of Eastern Europe hacked into his restaurant’s point-of-sale computer system in early 2008 to steal customers’ credit card information.

Sheen said he was held liable for fines, fees and charge backs, money recouped from the illegal purchases, on grounds that his system was not compliant with the credit card industry’s security standards.

Sheen called it “the worst nightmare in the world.”

An investigation by the U.S. Secret Service found that hackers attacked at least 15 restaurants in Louisiana and two in Mississippi. Customers’ credit card numbers were used to make illegal purchases around the world, federal officials said.

What followed became the subject of a lawsuit filed earlier this year in the 15th Judicial District Court in Lafayette against the manufacturer of the software, Georgia-based Radiant Systems, and its sole South Central Louisiana reseller, Computer World in Scott.

The Lafayette lawsuit was filed on behalf of Crawfish Town USA, Don’s Seafood & Steakhouse, Mansy Enterprises, Mel’s Diner Part II, Sammy’s, Sammy’s of Zachary and BS&J Enterprises. The restaurants, which have since taken steps to correct the problems, are seeking damages for the costs and loss of business they incurred.

A similar suit was filed in state district court in Baton Rouge by On the Half Shell, which was among the restaurants attacked by hackers. It also names Radiant Systems and Computer World as defendants.

Luiz Velez, resident agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Baton Rouge office, said each hack involved restaurants using Internet-based computer systems.

Velez said more than 100,000 cards were exposed and conservatively placed the fraud loss for area banks at about $1.2 million.

Outdated systems?

Radiant Systems manufactures the “Aloha POS.” Each system was purchased through and installed by Computer World.

At their core, the Lafayette and Baton Rouge lawsuits allege that hackers installed a key-logger software on the restaurant’s “Aloha POS” software, a computerized cash register of sorts.