In denial?: Phillip DeZwirek, who holds a 4.7% stake in Ashley Madison's parent company, says it's business as usual.
TORONTO: A major investor in infidelity website AshleyMadison.com's parent company said the data breach of its systems was a concern for customers but would not affect his backing of the company.
The crisis engulfing Ashley Madison and parent Avid Life Media deepened as lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit claiming US$750mil (RM3.1bil) in damages from the release by hackers of customers' e-mails stolen from the company.
The hackers, who call themselves the Impact Team, told a technology website they have a massive trove of data including users' photos, internal documents and e-mails they intend to release online.
Previous releases this week have contained millions of e-mail addresses, including US government officials, British civil servants and high-level executives at European and North America corporations, and e-mails by the company's founder Noel Biderman.
"Our business is continuing normally," said Phillip DeZwirek, who holds a 4.7% stake in the private company, according to a list of major shareholders included in Tuesday's data dump.
His son, Jason DeZwirek, owns 15%, and the family's investment company, Icarus Investment Corp, holds another 10.8%, giving the DeZwireks and their related companies a 30.5% stake in Avid Life Media.
Jason DeZwirek did not return a phone call seeking comment and efforts to reach Icarus by phone were unsuccessful.
Founder and chief executive officer of Avid Media, Noel Biderman, has 9.1%.
DeZwirek said he was not concerned about a potential material cost associated with either settling or fighting the class-action lawsuit.
"Class-action lawsuits are a part of the American way of life, and they have seeped slowly into Canada, it's all just one general cesspool of greedy lawyers," DeZwirek said.
"I happen to be a lawyer but not a greedy one. But that's part of doing business in America, and apparently Canada.
"As an investor, I'd be more concerned with finding out who did this and having them punished by the criminal system," he said.
Avid Life Media has employed a security guard to screen visitors to its midtown Toronto office, and employees leaving the office declined to comment when approached by Reuters. — Reuters
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