An oddly worded e-mail was the first sign of something amiss at Los Angeles firm Gipson Hoffman & Pancione. It didn’t read like the messages the firm’s attorneys usually sent each other.
The recipient, associate Gregory Fayer, picked up the phone and discovered that the colleague who supposedly sent the e-mail knew nothing of it. Fayer’s suspicions were already high because, days earlier, Google Inc. announced that hackers–believed to be in China–had penetrated the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates. Gipson Hoffman is litigating a $2.2 billion copyright infringement suit against the Chinese government.
