Konnech CEO Eugene Yu was arrested earlier this month in Michigan in connection with “theft of personal data.”
The alleged stolen data belonged to poll workers and was the subject of TrueTheVote’s “PIT” in Arizona last August, where Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips singled out the company.
During the PIT conference, Phillips and Engelbrecht alleged they were cooperating with the FBI in Michigan about data being sent overseas by this company. The investigation quickly started to turn on them after the FBI started to distance itself from the investigation.
Journalist “incognito” Kanekoa has covered this company and researched them better than anyone.
Here is the link to the LA County website.
The theft of data only impacted the election workers, alleges Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon. The LADA seized hard drives and other digital evidence from the Michigan software firm with the assistance of Meridian Township Police in MI. The LADA is seeking Yu’s extradition to Los Angeles.
Following the CEO’s arrest Fairfax County in Virginia announced they have stopped using Konnech’s PollChief election officer management software.
And now Detroit has terminated its contract with Konnech following its founder’s arrest.
Now we are finding out much more on Konnech and its operations.
According to Jennifer Van Laar at RedState Chinese official with ‘superadministration’ privileges were given access to the Konnech system.
And, just as many have suspected, Chinese “contractors” (code for CCP operatives; don’t kid yourself) have had full access to not just the personal identifying information of Los Angeles County election workers (emphasis mine):
“On or about August 18, 2022, Luis Nabergoi, project manager for Konnech’s contract with the County of Los Angeles, confirmed via the messaging app DingTalk that any employee for Chinese contractors working on PollChief software had ‘superadministration’ privileges for all PollChief clients. Mr. Nabergoi described the situation as a ‘huge security issue.’”
It’s more than just a “huge security issue.” Even if nothing nefarious has been done with that access, a possibility which requires the suspension of disbelief, this revelation validates every concern that has been expressed in the security of our elections since, well, long before 2020. But we know it was happening through August, 2022, at a minimum. And while the City of Minneapolis initially defended its contract with Konnech, saying there was no information that the personal identifying information of their poll workers was compromised, officials might want to revisit that statement in light of the above.
In addition, one function PollChief software provides is management of “election workers and voting
locations (including Vote Centers, drop boxes and check-in centers),” meaning that election officials can use the software to assign employees to retrieve ballots from drop boxes and deliver them to the elections office, and uses GPS and location data from the app on the employee’s phone to determine which employee is located closest to the drop box and continues to track their location for chain-of-custody purposes. However, as some have pointed out, it’s certainly possible that this app could be repurposed for ballot harvesting and delivery purposes.
The Epoch Times has more on China’s access to Konnech’s data.
Despite these obligations, Konnech employees were sending personal identifying information of Los Angeles election workers to third-party software developers in China “who assisted in creating and fixing” Konnech’s software known as PollChief, according to a complaint California prosecutors filed on Oct. 14.
In August, Luis Nabergoi, a Konnech project manager overseeing the Los Angeles contract, wrote in a Chinese-owned messaging app that any employees for Chinese contractors working on PollChief software would have “superadministration” access to the client data, the complaint alleges.
