The Dunwoody Police Department is seeking information from Facebook as part of its fraud investigation into claims the former assistant city attorney’s Facebook page was hacked.
Chief Billy Grogan said a subpoena was sent to Facebook a few days after former Assistant City Attorney Lenny Felgin filed a police report alleging his account was hacked and then used to post anti-Muslim statements on another person’s Facebook page.
“It will probably take a while,” to get anything back from Facebook officials, Grogan said. “They have a law enforcement department, but we don’t know what data we will get back.”
Felgin resigned Feb. 1 from Riley McLendon, the Marietta-based law firm where he’d worked for 10 years and that is contracted to provide legal services for the city of Dunwoody, after community backlash against the comments.
Felgin continues to proclaim his innocence and says his Facebook account was hacked. An internal investigation by the city was halted following Felgin’s resignation.
“I don’t feel I’ve been treated fairly in the media,” Felgin said. “The social media judges accepted something as real that is not.”
Felgin said he hired cyber security experts himself to try to find out who hacked his account, but they could find nothing. He has also deleted his Facebook account.
“I’m done with social media,” he said.
Felgin said he has no idea who would hack his account and post inflammatory comments to Facebook. One post included information about Felgin being a Soviet immigrant. Felgin said that was true, but that the hacker could have extrapolated the information from what was included in his Facebook history.
“Whoever did this to me – that is unknown,” he said.
The police investigation began Feb. 2, according to a police report, after Felgin notified the department on Jan. 31 that he believed his Facebook account was hacked.
At the Feb. 13 City Council meeting, Mayor Denis Shortal read a short statement stating Dunwoody is an inclusive city.
Aasees Kaur, a Dunwoody resident, spoke during public comment and asked the mayor and council to consider holding a town hall meeting to try to bring the community together and show that it is truly inclusive.
“My family has lived in Dunwoody for 20 to 30 years and this incident hit too close to home,” she said. “We need public statements that promote the value of equality and inclusiveness and that we value our immigrant community in our city.”
Cecil McLendon, the city attorney, has hired Judy Poag, as the city’s new assistant city attorney. She is the former assistant city attorney of Dalton and Ringgold.
The social media posts allegedly made by Felgin began circulating on Facebook Jan. 30.
The posts appeared Jan. 28 on the “PBS NewsHour” Facebook page under a story about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying his country will accept refugees. Trudeau’s response followed President Donald Trump’s executive order imposing a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. by citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen and a 120-day suspension of the U.S. refugee program. The travel ban was overturned in federal court.