HOPEWELL, Va. (WRIC) — Several customers of Vantage Point Credit Union (VPFCU) in Hopewell say their accounts were “held hostage” after a ransomware attack.
Multiple VPFCU customers reached out to 8News saying they didn’t have access to their accounts, couldn’t use their debit cards or even withdraw money from their accounts. Despite reaching out to the credit union, they say the issues went on for weeks without an explanation of what went wrong.
8News reached out to VPFCU, who said the problem stems from a ransomware attack on Trellance, the company the credit union’s data processor works with. A spokesperson from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) told 8News they are aware of the issue and that VPFCU is not the only credit union affected.
“The NCUA has been in regular contact with FedComp, the U.S. Treasury, CISA, the FBI, and Congress as part of our incident response,” said a spokesperson from the NCUA in an email. “The NCUA has also been in contact with affected institutions since last week. The agency is working directly with the affected credit unions to help them get their systems and operations back online so members can access their funds. Additionally, the NCUA is working to ensure these institutions have sufficient liquidity to meet cash and payment needs during this difficult period.”
According to NCUA, around 60 credit unions across the country are affected by the outage, all of which are small institutions with assets of $100 million or less.
VPFCU says the attack caused an outage to their system that has been creating problems for customers since November 26th. In a recent message to customers, VPFCU says its system went back online on Thursday:
“Our data processor has finally gotten us back online with them. We are working diligently to get all withdrawals and deposits posted with the effective date of your transaction,” said VPFCU in the statement. “This will take some time so please be patient with us. Rest assured your money is still safe at Vantage Point FCU as it has always been. NCUA, National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, insures each member account up to $250,000.”
8News asked VPFCU when its operations will be fully back up and running and were told that members are currently working to clear backlogs and hope to be fully functional by early next week.
“We have been working very hard to accommodate each and every member to the best of our ability and want to thank those that have reached out giving us their support and understanding while we are dealing with this issue,” said VPFCU.
