We are sad to report that our President, Robert Jacobi’s office in Chicago was broken into overnight this week. The robbery was significant with much of his company’s equipment stolen. Unfortunately Open Source Matters property was also stolen including checks due to be banked and our stock of blank checks.

Robert, Mike Demopoulos, our treasurer, and the rest of the board have been working tirelessly since the robbery to ensure that the project is protected from the consequences of  this unfortunate event.

As a precaution and on the advice of Citibank, we have frozen our accounts and contacted the issuers of the checks that were stolen to have them cancelled. We believe that in doing so we have protected the project from any potential loss, but due to the precautions in place we have also had to stop all outgoing payments until the matter is resolved. Incoming payments are not affected.

In order to bring our outgoing banking back online, Robert and Mike must visit Citibank together and they are working to clear their schedules to make this happen as soon as possible. The current timeline for completion is by the 9th of August 2017, but until further steps have been taken we cannot guarantee this.

If you are expecting a payment or reimbursement from the project, we ask for your patience whilst this matter is dealt with, the moment our banking is back up and running, all pending payments will be made as a matter of utmost priority.

Robert is obviously devastated by this incident and we hope the community can rally round him in support during this troubling time for him.