PICTURES of pastors in underwear were uploaded to the website of a Baptist church during a web war between the church and a group of hackers.
The “cybersquatters” targeted the church by cloning its webpage for three years and turning it into an online casino.
When Chichester Baptist Church took legal action and tried to regain control of their online image, the hackers uploaded photos of pastors in their underwear.
The gang used the domain chichesterbaptist.org.uk to run a secret gambling den with virtual roulette tables and slot machines, much to the confusion of local parishioners.
A recent ruling from Nominet – the body that oversees UK websites – has now transferred the domain back to the West Sussex Church.
Legal papers from the ruling said: “The Domain Name registered in 2022 was initially used for a site which cloned a previous version of the Complainant’s web site and offered links to commercial gambling services.”
To make matters worse, the Chichester Baptist Church offers its parishioners courses on money management and debt counselling.
The hackers used a similar domain name to the church’s webpage alongside its texts, images and logos to intentionally confuse and deceive members of the congregation, the documents read.
Links on the cloned site would take users to “PayPal casinos” which redirected them to commercial gambling pages.
“As a Baptist Church, the Complainant’s values are fundamentally opposed to gambling. The Respondent’s use of the Complainant’s name and its specific (albeit older) website content to funnel traffic to betting sites caused severe reputational damage” said the ruling.
The hackers “tarnished” the church’s goodwill, it added.
When the church complained, the hackers emailed Nominet on February 2 of this year. They insisted the previous content was gone and only “entirely new and unrelated content” remained.
This new content was in fact: “a mock ‘church’ layout featuring inappropriate, semi-naked photographs purported to be the leadership of the church.”
The three images of “pastors” in their underwear are understood to have been generated by AI.
An email for the Baptist church remained prominently at the top of the cloned website throughout.
The ruling declared that Gagnon’s actions constituted “retaliatory abuse, cyberharassment, and defamation.”
He acted in “bad faith” the documents said and it cannot be trusted that Gagnon will not abuse again in the future.
The domain name is to be transferred to the church according to the ruling on March 4.
A spokesperson for the Baptist Union of Great Britain told The Telegraph: “We were extremely concerned when we learned of the inappropriate use and content being displayed on the domain chichesterbaptist.org.uk.
“We had no known relationship or history with the registrant.
“We approached Nominet to recover the domain. We contended that the name was an abusive registration which took unfair advantage of, or was detrimental to, our established rights.
“We were pleased that the dispute resolution service ordered the transfer of chichesterbaptist.org.uk to the church after determining it held superior rights and the registration was abusive.”
