South Hunterdon Vendor Hacked, District Itself Socially Engineered out of $147,000
Updated: Sep 8
By Mike Spille
Article Updated 9/6/202 With Infographic Timeline
In the summer of 2025, two big things happened at the South Hunterdon Regional School District. First, they appointed a new, totally inexperienced Business Administrator named Dr. Peter Lutchko.
Second, they got socially engineered out of $147,000.
We've been sitting on this story since the Spring of 2026, but it's time for the public to know.
By the summer of 2025, J. Andrew Harris was out as BA, and Dr. Lutchko was in. Like Mr. Harris, Dr. Lutchko was promoted from within the district, and also like Harris, he had no prior experience as a Business Adminstrator. The lack of experience was going to turn out to be costly.
Sometime in 2025, a South vendor named LBJ Interiors (“LBJ”) was hacked by one of their sub-vendors. In July, 2026, the hacker sent a bogus email to the South Hunterdon Regional School District (“The District” or “District”) Business Administrator, Dr. Peter Lutchko. In the email, they asked that the district change payment methodologies from paper checks to electronic fund transfers.
This change was effected by the District, and the next payment of $146,421 was sent to the indicated bank account. It was later found that the email and instructions were fraudulent. The problem here is that Dr. Lutchko and his employees in the business side of the district never called a pre-defined number to verify the new instructions, but simply relied on an unsolicited email.
That $147K completely vanished and was never recovered.
The District and LBJ went back and forth on resolving the issue. Ultimately, it was determined that the District insurance should be involved and would pay it as a claim, with a $25,000 deductible being owed by the District.
The District then strong-armed LBJ into eating an invoice for ~$19,000 in exchange for the District re-sending the $146,421 (this time to the correct account!). The District seemed to waiver between calling calling this punishment for the vendor being hacked (which appears to have been through no fault of their own), and as a way to recoup a portion of their deductible. The vendor fought this as being grossly unfair, but given that the District was holding $146,421 effectively hostage, the Vendor had no choice but to accept the District terms and sign an agreement that they would void the $19K invoice.
A 29 page complaint regarding this matter eventually found it's way to the NJ Department of Education, and is still being actively investigated by the DOE months later according to our sources. Rather than regale you with the details here, you can go read the complaint in it's entirety below.
For the more visually inclined, we have an infographic showing the timeline of events.
The real fundamental issues with what happened to South were three-fold:
Not understanding that South was hacked, too. The District never fully understood that they were socially engineered by the Hacker. Socially engineering is just a hack by another methodology. They fully blamed LBJ Interiors for being technically hacked, but never acknowledged that they were complicit in losing the $147K by not following obvious verification procedures before changing payment methods for a major vendor.
Trying to avoid paying the deductible. The District sought to evade its $25K deductible by giving LBJ the shaft and forcing them to eat an invoice. It's up to the authorities to decide if this was insurance fraud, or just the District being their usual nasty and incompetent selves.
No mea culpa. Superintendent Suozzo and BA Lutchko never acknowledged what happened in public. They did their best to hide it from tax payers. It only ever came to light when the finance chair made an off-hand comment during a public meeting.
As mentioned at the top of the article, we've been sitting on this since April of this year, patiently waiting for the Dept of Ed to make a determination either way. We are briniging this to the public's attention now in light of the allegations of wrong-doing by West Amwell Township CFO Peter Suh, and potentially involvement of new software systems being utilized in managing West Amwell's finances. West Amwell's next door neighbor is the High School, and they got hacked only a year ago. It could very well happen to the Township, too, and may already occured.
You would never know that West Amwell was the gem of Hunterdon County by reading this and all the other articles posted on the West Amwell Times. The author is certainly very opinionated and has a fixation on the local school district and municipal government. Where are all the good news stories about West Amwell? A more appropriate moniker for this publication might be "How Many Times Can We Bash West Amwell".
Wow. That’s all I can say. Wow.