William Henry Lee III, the Mayor of Delano, GA told a press
conference Friday that the Water Maintenance Department (WMD) had suffered a
40% drop in revenues over the last year, forcing the city to seek emergency
operating loans from the federal Water Protection Agency (WPA).
Lee announced that the preliminary investigation by the
Georgia Bureau of Inquiry (GBI) indicated that the cause appears to be that
someone has tampered with the smart water meters installed by the WMD two years
ago. The investigation has been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Inquiry (FBI)
because it is a Federal crime to tamper with municipal water systems.
Johnathan Quest, the spokesperson for the FBI, confirmed
that an investigation of the Delano WMD was underway, but refused to discuss
the on-going investigation.
A person close to the investigation, however, told this
reporter that central management unit of the smart meter system had been hacked
and used to reprogram the meters so that they reported smaller amounts of water
usage than was really measured by the meters. It was apparently a pretty
sophisticated attack with significant amounts of insider knowledge because the
usage rates were reduced over a six-month period so that all customers were
reportedly using only the maximum amount of water that would meet the minimum
billing requirements.
Quest has stated that the FBI is looking to talk with Daniel Krumitz, a person of interest who used to work
for Robotron Water Systems, the company contracted by Delano WMD to install the
smart meter system. Robotron confirmed that Krumitz had work for them, but that
he had left the company about a year ago.
