OAKLAND — The city of Oakland agreed to pay out settlements to thousands of current and former police officers and city workers this year after their personal information was exposed in a 2023 ransomware attack.

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The data breach, which involved hackers associated with the ransomware group Play, brought many of the city government’s technological systems to a crashing halt, holding up the city’s ability to carry out basic services for weeks on end.

Home addresses, medical information and even Social Security numbers were compromised in the attack and ended up on the dark web — a hidden layer of the internet that can be accessed only with certain software.

Ransomware attacks are widespread in the U.S., with the stolen data often trafficked in countries like Russia and North Korea. Such attacks in recent years have targeted the city of Hayward, as well as the East Bay-based Patelco Credit Union and The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, a prominent housing nonprofit in San Jose.

These kinds of cyber crimes have laid bare the fragility of digital security among public agencies, which experts have said often lack the safeguards that large private corporations employ to protect sensitive employee data.

The ordeal in Oakland resulted in a class-action lawsuit, led by police services technician Hada Gonzalez, that eventually saw over 10,000 plaintiffs, including past and current city personnel of all kinds, said Scott Cole, an attorney representing them.

It is unclear exactly how many city employees claimed payouts this year, but in principle the city agreed to distribute checks worth $175 each to Oakland police officers affected in the ransomware attack. The settlement, filed in May, had not previously been reported by local news outlets.

California law entitles police officers to compensation if their personal safety is put at risk, though other city workers who had their data exposed were eligible for payments up to $350 if they demonstrated financial losses suffered because of the ransomware attack.

Oakland Deputy Chief of Police Anthony Tedesco, left, Police Chief Floyd Mitchell, Mayor Barbara Lee, and Department of Violence Prevention Chief Holly Joshi hold a press conference about the crime that is down in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group) 

The city of Oakland also offered three years of free credit monitoring to any member of the class-action suit who claimed it.

Technological snags posed by the ransomware attack stretched on for months in Oakland, placing the city’s preparedness under scrutiny.

An audit released in 2022 — the year before the breach — had warned of “staffing and resource constraints” that could leave the city vulnerable to “ransomware attacks, cyberattacks, and other threats.”

“It was really jaw-dropping to see the level of neglect that the city brought to cybersecurity,” Cole, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said this week.

The Oakland City Attorney’s Office did not immediately provide comment Tuesday on the settlement.

Oakland’s police officers’ union took particular interest in the ransomware attack’s impacts, publicly demanding transparency from the city and forging what would become an enduring spat with then-Mayor Sheng Thao.

Earlier this year, police Chief Floyd Mitchell blamed the ransomware attack for delays in the department’s investigations of officer misconduct claims — a lapse that has helped ensure the Oakland Police Department will remain under federal oversight for some time longer.

The officers’ frustrations with the city extended well beyond fears of identity theft, Cole said.

“Their personal information being so public in a city that is seen as a hotbed for crime,” the attorney said, “was pretty devastating to these officers.”

Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].