Was Rola Motor Group hit by ransomware?

Rola Motor Group was listed by the thegentlemen ransomware operation (South Africa), 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 Rola Motor Group breach?

thegentlemen published data attributed to Rola Motor Group. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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Rola Motor Group

Claimed by Thegentlemen · listed 5 months ago

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedJan 20, 2026
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Thegentlemen
Status: Data leaked
Country: South Africa
Listed on leak site: Jan 20, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

Rola Motor Group is a South African multi-brand automotive dealership group operating across the Western Cape region, including locations in Somerset West and Robertson. The group sells and services a wide range of vehicle brands including Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Mazda, Volvo, Alfa Romeo, BYD, and many others. They also offer vehicle financing, parts, and trade-in services.

Industry: Automotive Retail & Dealership Group
Address: Somerset West, Western Cape, South Africa

Attack summary

Severity: medium — Status is listed as data_published indicating exfiltration and publication occurred, but the leak post content is inaccessible (bot wall), no specific data types or scale are confirmed, no ransom amount stated, and no indication of regulated data such as medical or government records.

The group 'thegentlemen' claims to have attacked Rola Motor Group with a disclosed status of data_published, suggesting exfiltration and/or publication of data. The leak post content is not readable due to a bot-verification challenge page, so specific claims about encryption or data types cannot be confirmed from the post itself.

medium

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Customer records
Financial records
Employee data
Vehicle sales data
Dealer operational data

What the group claims

www.rola.co.za https://www.zoominfo.com/c/rola-motor-group/479741917 Rola Motor Group specializes in the sale of new, demo, and quality pre-owned vehicles, offering a seamless online finance pre-approval process. They provide services for buying and selling cars, as well as vehicle servicing across various brands. Their intended clients include individuals looking to purchase vehicles, sell their cars, or seek financing solutions. Established in 1963, Rola Motor Group is known for its exceptional customer service and a wide range of automotive solutions.

The leak post

captured from the group's site

Gentlecloud Protection 🛡️ Gentlecloud Verifying your browser... Initializing security checks... I'm not a bot

Sources

Victim sitewww.rola.co.za
Leak posthttp://tezwsse5czllksjb7cwp65rvnk4oobmzti2znn42i43bjdfd2prqqkad.onion

Source

Indexed 5 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 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 483 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on September 9, 2025; most recent post June 11, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Also tracked as: the gentlemen.

Timeline of this disclosure

January 20, 2026Rola Motor Group listed by thegentlemenon the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by thegentlemen

thegentlemen has been linked to 483 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full thegentlemen dossier →

Sector and geography

Geographically, Rola Motor Group is reported in South Africa, a country with 15 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by thegentlemen means Rola Motor Group 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.
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.