A car hire firm have seem their stock drop £12million after a meddler sent a defamatory email to 700 clients.
Car hire firm Helphire have taken Google to court after a malicious email sent from a Gmail account saw their shares plummet £12million in a single day.
The Bath-based business who specialise in providing replacement cars to 'no-fault' drivers involved in accidents on behalf of car insurance companies, initiated legal proceedings against the search engine giant as part of their attempt to find out who is responsible for sending the defamatory mailing.
Google are now known to have complied with the court order and have controversially supplied details of the email account and ISP used by the meddler.
Written under the psudoname Peter Franks, the 1200 word email is know to have been sent from a gmail account that was opened specifically for this purpose and closed a few minutes after the damage had been done.
While there have been few leads, even in light of the information provided by Google, investigators suspect that a disgruntled employee is to blame. As a result, Helphire, are currently offering a £2,000 reward to anyone who can offer information on the culprit.
Helphire CEO, Mark Johnson, remains confident that the ‘electronics experts’ brought in by the firm to investigate will be able to identify the author of the email. Once uncovered it’s likely that the individual behind ‘Peter Franks’ email will face prosecution for the act.
The exact content of the email has not yet been made public, however it is thought to have contained slanderous remarks and derogatory contents about the business practices employed by the car hire firm. What is known is that the email was forwarded to over 700 of Helphire’s most important clients and business associates, with the AA, Direct Line, ESure and Swinton all featuring on the mailing list.
The misdemeanour couldn’t have come at a worse time for the struggling firm who have undergone a £45million rights issue and seen a 75% drop in the value of their stock already this year.
When news of the email went public shares in the company were seen to fall 8.75% to 90p in a single day, cropping the companies worth by over £12million.
