Was Ritz Safety hit by ransomware?

Ritz Safety was listed by the thegentlemen 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 thegentlemen ransomware group?

thegentlemen 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 Ritz Safety breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to Ritz Safety. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Ritz Safety

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 5 days ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedSep 7, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Manufacturing
Listed on leak site: Sep 7, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Ritz Safety is the largest privately-held PPE and safety equipment distributor in the Americas, founded in 1983 in Pompano Beach, Florida. Now headquartered in Dayton, Ohio with 17–18 locations nationwide, the company serves 5,000+ customers monthly with 200,000+ SKUs, equipment rental/repair, custom embroidery, and on-site safety training. 100% family-owned by the Crotty family with ~$100–150M in annual revenue.

Industry: PPE & Safety Equipment Distribution
Address: Dayton, Ohio (HQ); founded Pompano Beach, Florida
Employees: 220–250
Founded: 1983

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Data published status is confirmed, but the leak post provides no inventory of exfiltrated data, no proof files, and no specifics on what was accessed or stolen. Without evidence of sensitive data (PII, financial records, customer data at scale) or operational disruption, severity cannot exceed medium.

The threat actor claims access to Ritz Safety's systems; the leak post does not specify whether encryption, data exfiltration, or both occurred, nor does it detail what data was compromised or published.

medium

What the group claims

ritzsafety.com zoominfo.com/c/ritz-safety-llc/82166398 Ritz Safety Americas largest privately-held PPE & safety equipment distributors — founded in 1983 in Pompano Beach, Florida by Emily Ritz and her son Peter Merkl, selling work boots and gloves from a truck, now HQ'd in Dayton, Ohio with ~220–250 employees and 17–18 locations nationwide. Hidden twist: in 2006 the family's uniform-rental empire Van Dyne Crotty was sold to Cintas — but the brothers Dan and Bob Crotty kept Ritz Safety out of the deal and built it into a roll-up consolidator: 9 acquisitions (2015–2022), 5,000+ customers monthly, access to 200,000+ SKUs, private-label lines, equipment rental/repair, custom embroidery and free on-site safety training. Revenue: $100–150M (2025: +12% = +$20M growth, best Q2 in the company's 42-year history), 100% family-owned (Crotty family), no PE. Bottom line: a family dynasty that lost its parent empire to Cintas but turned the "leftover" safety distributor into a new national powerhouse

Sources

Victim siteritzsafety.com

Source

Indexed 5 days 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 thegentlemen

thegentlemen is a ransomware group that emerged in September 2025, operating with apparent financial motivations based on their broad targeting of commercial sectors. The group has documented 267 victims across multiple countries, with primary focus on the United States, Thailand, France, Brazil, and India. Their targeting strategy demonstrates a preference for high-value sectors including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and financial services organizations. Given the group's recent emergence and limited public documentation from established threat intelligence sources such as CISA, FBI, or major security research firms, specific details regarding their country of origin, operational structure, attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and whether they employ ransomware-as-a-service models remain unclear. The relatively high victim count of 267 in a short operational timeframe since September 2025 suggests either an aggressive campaign pace or potential inflation of victim numbers through affiliate operations, though without corroborating intelligence reports, the group's exact operational capabilities and notable campaigns cannot be definitively established. Current intelligence indicates the group remains active as of late 2025, though comprehensive threat profiling requires additional validated reporting from authoritative cybersecurity sources. The group has been linked to 838 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post September 9, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

September 7, 2026Ritz Safety listed by thegentlemen on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 838 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full thegentlemen dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Manufacturing sector, which has 3,696 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, Ritz Safety is reported in United States, a country with 3,165 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Ritz Safety 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 thegentlemen'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.