Peachtree City Councilmember Clint Holland’s website taken over by Chinese porn

In the midst of a busy campaign season for City Council, Peachtree City’s sitting Councilmember Clint Holland had his website taken over by Chinese porn. It wasn’t the work of hackers. Holland hadn’t renewed his URL in time.

“It was stolen. I didn’t resign up for it again in time. I was about a week or so late. I was busy with other things and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s just my website. I’ll go get it. I’ll pay my fees so I can get it back.’ It was stolen by a Chinese company. It’s all in Chinese and it’s not a very nice site. It turned it into a pornography site, but it’s in Chinese,” said Holland.

“They stole that thing and I have no idea why. I talked to our friends at GoDaddy and I offered to buy it back and the Chinese company came back saying, ‘There’s not enough zeros at the end of your offer.’ I offered ’em a hundred bucks. Hey, I’ll buy it back for a hundred bucks. Let me have it back. And they were asking for at least two more zeros. That’s $10,000. And I said, no, thank you,” explained Holland. 

The Chinese organization is holding Clint Holland’s website for ransom. He said, “GoDaddy said, ‘this is exactly what happens.’ They said, ‘If the Chinese get ahold of it, kiss it goodbye.’ And I was one of those where I didn’t respond quick enough to renew it, and I got burned.” 

Since Clint is aware that the site isn’t good anymore, he affirmed that he was going to use social media instead of a website presence. “I’m not going to use it. It’s done. I’m using my Facebook pages and stuff like that.”

This is also problematic, because Clint Holland’s facebook profile has also been spoofed. There’s another Clint Holland using his photos and info. And that profile is promoting the compromised website. 

Clint said that he’s also reported that account to Facebook, and gotten a denial of his reporting, “Facebook says they’re a legitimate person. They’ve stolen all my friends’ names off my website, and they’ve contacted ’em and asked them to be friends. I’ve written something to all of them saying, don’t do it. That’s not me. So it’s really gotten to be pretty nasty out there, and I can’t find out who it is that took my name. I mean, the wild west of the internet and Facebook and all of these has now struck home on me and it’s unfortunate.”

Holland hasn’t managed to scrub the website address from everywhere you might encounter him. After our interview last week, Holland’s golf car with its campaign signs was spotted at the Peachtree City Farmer’s Market. And those signs still had the web address leading to Chinese porn on it. 

The Citizen is not sharing the link to that site, on both principal and the chance that it might contain malware. Proceed with caution, should you know Clint Holland’s URL.