The company said the email, which was sent to thousands, was the result of a cyber attack
Thousands of affiliates of Harvard University received a racist email on their university accounts over the weekend from a sender identifying itself as Equity Prime Mortgage.
The email stated that Equity Prime was “a lender for whites only,” as wells as containing a racial slur and a reference to lynching, according to a report by The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s student-run newspaper.
Atlanta-based Equity Prime Mortgage said that it had recently learned that an organization had obtained a list of emails “from an outside source” and used it “to deliver false information on behalf of the company.”
“The information was used by the unknown organization to fraudulently apply for loan applications on behalf of the individuals impacted,” Harold Reid, a media strategist representing the mortgage company, told the Crimson. Reid said that Equity Prime was working closely with the FBI to determine who was responsible for the cyber attack.
Equity Prime Mortgage made headlines earlier this month when it fired its human resources director, Melissa Rolfe, for comments she made on social media. Rolfe is the stepmother of former Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe, who is facing felony murder charges in the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks. Brooks was killed earlier this month during a traffic stop outside a Wendy’s restaurant in southeast Atlanta.
Equity Prime Mortgage told Atlanta news station 11Alive that it was co-founded by people of color and was committed to “building wealth in communities of color that have historically suffered from systemic racism.”
