NBA star Wade goes after alleged Texas hackers

IDG News Service - His Miami Heat team lost the NBA finals to the Dallas Mavericks last month and now Dwyane Wade is headed back to a Texas court, but not to play basketball.

Instead of facing Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki, Wade is going after currently unknown perpetrators who in recent years hacked a variety of his personal online accounts.

Wade, one of the best players in the National Basketball Association (NBA), named as defendants 50 generic "John Does" in a complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Wade filed the civil lawsuit in Texas because a substantial amount of the hacking activity allegedly initiated in the state, where in 2006 Wade led the Miami Heat to its first and only championship, beating the Mavericks.

If it were proven that the alleged hacking was indeed carried out from Texas, it will be interesting to see if part of the motivation was to get back at Wade over the basketball rivalry.

Wade alleges that between 2007 and last month, malicious hackers broke into various of his online accounts, including a Yahoo e-mail account and a Twitter account, and accessed and misused sensitive information and communications contained in them.

Wade is seeking a temporary and permanent injunction forbidding the malicious hackers from further accessing and using any of the compromised personal and business data. He also seeks to recover unspecified damages based on the harm inflicted by the hacking.

The player alleges that the defendants created mayhem after compromising his online accounts, changing account settings, including his password, and using the accounts to impersonate him for malicious purposes, such as threatening and insulting other people, and deceiving them into disclosing confidential information.