14 DAY TRIAL // British celebrity chef and restaurant chain owner Gordon Ramsay is accusing members of his wife's family of planting spyware on his company's computers to intercept his personal and business email.
In a lawsuit filed this month, he claims that his father-in-law and former CEO of Gordon Ramsay Holdings, Chris Hutcheson, defrauded the company together with his son and other members of their family.
The complaint which is the result of months of investigations by a team of specialists hired by Ramsay, claims that Hutcheson stole £1.42 million of company money as direct withdrawals or transfers to his private bank account.
Hutcheson's son Adam, brother of Gordon Ramsay's wife Tara and the company's former managing director is also accused of misusing company funds and helping his father cover up the fraud.
According to the Daily Mail, Ramsay also discovered that his father-in-law has been living a second life for over over 30 years with a secret wife and two grown-up children.
More importantly from an information security perspective, are the chef's claims that Hutcheson with the help of a computer expert named Kevin Fung, installed spyware on the company's computers and monitored his business and personal emails.
Ramsay's personal assistant Jennifer Aves-Eliott is also believed to have been targeted in the cyber spying operation with a trojan taking over 1,868 snapshots of her computer's screen.
"If you want your own personal and business life to become less ugly than Gordon Ramsay's, then one thing I would recommend is ensuring that you and your staff are on their guard against malware attacks, and keep your defences up-to-date," commented Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos.
"Of course, if your own IT team are against you, things get much much trickier," he adds. Indeed the risk of insider threats is among the greatest companies face and can only be mitigated through tight access controls.