How a hacker deleted one Gmail account and disrupted an entire business
Grow Universe Inc., better known to customers as Café Melo, is a Harlem event space at 53 East 131st Street. The company relied on a single Gmail account to run its daily operations, but in the early hours of February 14, 2025, the company’s CEO Dwight Smith began receiving security alerts from Google.
One after another, they showed the recovery phone number had been removed, the backup email swapped, the password reset, and the account name changed.
By the next evening, the Gmail inbox that served as the hub of business operations was gone. The account had contained years of records, contracts, and business correspondence, along with the contacts that connected Café Melo to its customers and vendors.
