Was Forestdale hit by ransomware?

Forestdale was listed by the Moneymessage ransomware operation (United States), and stolen data was published on the group's leak site. Darkfield tracks this disclosure with the original leak post, screenshot and group context.

Who is the Moneymessage ransomware group?

Moneymessage is a ransomware operator tracked by Darkfield. See the full operator dossier for its known victims, sectors targeted, IOCs and leak-site infrastructure.

What data was leaked in the Forestdale breach?

Moneymessage published data attributed to Forestdale (~2TB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Forestdale

Claimed by Moneymessage · listed 2 months ago

2TB

Data size

$40

Ransom

demanded

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedMay 12, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Moneymessage
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Child welfare services
Listed on leak site: May 12, 2026
Data size: 2TB
Ransom demanded: $40

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Forestdale is a nonprofit child welfare agency headquartered in Queens, New York, operating from three offices across Queens and Brooklyn. The organization provides foster care, adoption services, preventive family services, and community support programs targeting abused and neglected children and families in crisis. In 2020, Forestdale received a multimillion-dollar contract to expand services throughout Brooklyn.

Industry: Child Welfare Services & Foster Care
Address: Queens, New York, USA (also offices in Brooklyn Heights and Brooklyn)

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a child welfare agency whose records almost certainly contain highly sensitive PII on minors, foster children, adoptees, and vulnerable families — a category of regulated and especially sensitive data. 2 TB of data has been published, constituting confirmed large-scale exfiltration of data pertaining to a protected population.

Money Message claims to have exfiltrated approximately 2 TB of sensitive private data from Forestdale; data has been published via a download link on the group's leak site, with no encryption claim explicitly stated.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Sensitive private data (2 TB)
Child welfare case records (inferred)
Foster care and adoption records (inferred)
Family and minor PII (inferred)
Organizational/financial records (inferred)

What the group claims

Forestdale is a child welfare agency headquartered in Queens. In addition to ensuring the well-being of abused and neglected children through foster care and adoption services, Forestdale partners with schools, religious organizations, business owners, and community leaders to address the root causes of family crises. The three-and-a-half-acre campus includes open fields, a basketball court, and a JetBlue playground. In 2020, Forestdale received a multimillion-dollar contract to provide services throughout Brooklyn and open offices approximately half a mile from its original location in Brooklyn Heights. Forestdale operates from three offices to better serve families in Brooklyn and Queens.

The leak post

captured from the group's site

```
[{"incidentDate":"2026.05.11","data":{"name":"Forestdale","timer":{"isEnabled":false,"expirationTime":"2026-05-10T12:00:00.000-08:00"},"incidentDate":"11.05.2026","description":"Forestdale is a child welfare agency headquartered in Queens. In addition to ensuring the well-being of abused and neglected children through foster care and adoption services, Forestdale partners with schools, religious organizations, business owners, and community leaders to address the root causes of family crises. The three-and-a-half-acre campus includes open fields, a basketball court, and a JetBlue playground. In 2020, Forestdale received a multimillion-dollar contract to provide services throughout Brooklyn and open offices approximately half a mile from its original location in Brooklyn Heights. Forestdale operates from three offices to better serve families in Brooklyn and Queens.\r\n\r\nWebsite:www.forestdaleinc.org\r\n\r\nRevenue:$40 Million\r\n\r\nSensitive private data: 2TB\r\n\r\nWait for data","images":[],"links":[],"downloadFiles":[{"file":"\/pub\/029\/","text":""}]}}]
```

Data the group says was taken

Sensitive private data

Screenshot of the leak post

Sources

Victim sitewww.forestdaleinc.org
Leak posthttp://blogvl7tjyjvsfthobttze52w36wwiz34hrfcmorgvdzb6hikucb7aqd.onion/news.php?contentId=1

Source

Indexed 2 months ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About Moneymessage

Moneymessage is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in March 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors globally. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from major security agencies, detailed information about their origin and affiliations remains largely unknown, though their targeting patterns suggest they may operate as a smaller independent operation rather than a large-scale RaaS model. The group has demonstrated a broad targeting approach across healthcare, business services, public sector, government, and financial organizations, with their 29 documented victims spanning geographically diverse regions including the United States, Italy, Argentina, Bangladesh, and Russia, though specific attack methodologies and technical capabilities have not been extensively documented by major threat intelligence firms. Notable campaigns and high-profile attacks attributed to Moneymessage have not been widely reported by established security researchers or law enforcement agencies, likely due to the group's relatively recent emergence and smaller scale of operations compared to more prominent ransomware families. The group appears to remain active as of available reporting, though comprehensive analysis of their current operational status is limited by the lack of detailed public documentation from authoritative sources such as CISA, FBI, or major cybersecurity firms. The group has been linked to 34 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on March 29, 2023; most recent post July 9, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: money message.

Timeline of this disclosure

May 12, 2026Forestdale listed by Moneymessageon the group's public leak site

Data size: 2TB
Ransom demanded: $40

Other recent disclosures by Moneymessage

Moneymessage has been linked to 34 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Moneymessage dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Child welfare services sector. Geographically, Forestdale is reported in United States, a country with 3,115 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Moneymessage means Forestdale appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
Report the incident to your national CERT, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Moneymessage's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.