Saturday, 10:07 AM – New London, CT

The line at checkout was longer than usual—a holiday weekend crowd drawn by deep discounts and a forecast of sunshine. But something wasn’t right.

“I keep getting card declined errors.”
“Our POS terminals just froze.”

Kate, the store owner, refreshed the dashboard. Her retail management system wouldn’t load. Within minutes, all four stores across the region went dark—no sales, no inventory access, no payments.

An hour later, she receives an email:
“Your systems have been encrypted. Pay $40,000 in Bitcoin to restore your data.”

Download the case study to find out what happened next!