Russell Hit With $5,700 Bill Over Police Cyber Incident
Though a new year has begun, Russell Township is still dealing with fallout from a 2025 cybersecurity incident.
Though a new year has begun, Russell Township is still dealing with fallout from a 2025 cybersecurity incident.
The Geauga County Auditor’s Office and the Automatic Data Processing board are seeking $5,700 in reimbursement for resources spent responding to a breach connected to the Russell Police Department.
The issue began last September, when two of the police department’s devices — a mobile data terminal and a school resource officer laptop — were compromised due to a potential breach believed to have originated from a Russian source. The incident prompted ADP to block the department’s email domain out of safety concerns, Geauga County Auditor Chuck Walder, who sits on the ADP board, said last fall.
“This action was proactively taken to protect the Geauga County network and Russell Township’s other government operations,” Walder said in a Jan. 7 letter to Russell Township Trustees.
ADP did not receive notice that the department switched email domains, leaving the original domain blocked, ADP Chief Deputy Administrator Frank Antenucci said in a Jan. 8 follow-up interview.
“We’ve heard informally that they sort of went ahead and just shut down the old police domain and then created a new one, but they have not officially told us that,” he added.
Antenucci said ADP would not have committed as many resources to assisting the police department had officials known the department planned to abandon the original domain.
“It would just be very frustrating that (ADP) went through all that work, tried to help them and then they were not going to use it anyway,” Antenucci said. “It could have saved us a lot of hours had they just told us up front what they were going to do with it — which was to let it sort of just go away.”
The department applied for a .gov domain in August, Police Chief Tom Swaidner said Jan. 13.
“It’s an application process and then an implementation process. ADP knew we were in that process the entire time,” he said. “Once we received (the domain), we migrated over to that. Then, we didn’t really push the issue to unblock something unnecessarily.”
Walder’s letter states ADP used a substantial amount of resources to assist the police department, resulting in $5,700 in costs.
“Significant county resources were invested in responding, investigating, managing and attempting to remediate this issue from September 2025 through the present,” Walder said in his letter. “As the associated costs were incurred solely due to Russell Township’s police department email incident and subsequent lack of fulfilling committed obligations, they should not and cannot be absorbed by the broader county user base or its taxpayers. An itemized invoice is enclosed and we respectfully request reimbursement. ADP remains committed to supporting Russell Township and all county entities, but effective cybersecurity requires timely communication, cooperation and diligent follow-through. We hope you will work with us to improve collaboration moving forward to avoid wasting taxpayer money.”
Swaidner said he never received the letter or invoice, but heard about them from trustees.
“It was a surprise to receive an invoice because from my understanding, nobody else — no other municipality has received an invoice that I know about,” he said.
Antenucci said township trustees had pledged to maintain communication throughout the process, but failed to do so.
“We’ve had a number of meetings with stakeholders and the trustees told us, ‘We would shepherd this through. We would be communicating, we would work with you,’” and we have not heard anything from the trustees,” Antenucci said. “I think we’re just disappointed that there was a lot of talk on communication, but then ultimately, there was no communication.”
Trustee Kristina Port said Jan. 12 trustees have not yet discussed the issue and she would not comment until they reached a consensus on how to proceed.
