'Violated, angry': Hacker steals $14k, 33k social media followers from OKC vintage market

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR)- While Vintage Market Days is set to kick off its big event with more than 100 vendors the first weekend of April, it's had some major hurdles pop up.

Vintage Market Days Owner, Erica Parker told KFOR she received a Facebook notification in late January that someone was trying to reset her password.

Parker said she reached out to a few of her employees who have access to the business' social media, but that was a dead end as no one claimed to be actively resetting the password.

"Within a matter of 10 minutes, I was already home. I had my computer open working on what was going on. The hackers had already got into my account and reset my two-factor authenticator. Therefore, I lost all access," explained Parker.

She immediately went through a Meta recovery process and successfully regained access to 2/3 of the accounts. The one still not recovered has 33,000 followers that took Parker more than a decade to build.

"[The hackers] immediately changed the names to all of my accounts and then they changed my profile picture, but they left everything else. About a week after I was hacked, they started running ads with my ad account and for a diabetic watch which was actually very strange," added Parker.

In addition to the stolen social media followers, the hackers allegedly stole $14,000 from Parker to run those advertisements.

"It's definitely been like a roller coaster. You're violated because you're stolen from. And then also I mean, angry, really like wanting to be able to run your business and not being able to is really hard," said Parker. "It's been a learning experience because when you're reliant on that one way really to sell your tickets, we just had to really reconfigure and pivot the business to move forward."

Parker said roughly 75% of Vintage Market Days' ticket sales are from social media, so she worried there wouldn't be a big turnout in April.

However, 3 Strands Vintage Antique Mall and Decades Revisited Vintage Mall have offered to sell tickets for the April event in person at their own stores.

"We got news of it through a friend that is actually with us in this mall that is a vendor here. She told us of the complications they were having being hacked and everything. This is kind of a small community of people and we felt for them because I couldn't imagine with us just opening if that happened to us, so we wanted to reach out and help," said 3 Strands Vintage Antique Mall Owner, Cindy Gardner.

Gardner said it's a scary feeling to see someone in the vintage community lose as much as Parker did at the time.

So far, Gardner said they have sold a high number of tickets, but was unable to give a definitive number.

"You should support [Vintage Market Days] because they have had a hit and it has been scary for them. Everybody needs to go out and visit them," stated Gardner.

They have been a great support for us during this time and we really appreciate both of them.

Vintage Market Days Owner, Erica Parker

Fortunately, Parker said her bank has reimbursed her the $14,000. However, she said getting in touch with someone from Meta has been nearly impossible.

"I still lost thay Facebook page we spent way more than $14,000 on building and creating. We had 33,000 followers on our Oklahoma City page. That's like, poof, gone within the blink of an eye," said Parker. "You get replies from robots. You don't get a person. You get a robot in the middle of the night. Usually at 2 a.m. replying to your message and then you have to reply back and wait for them to reply again. I've never seen anything like it."

She stated she will continue working to recover her Facebook page and doesn't plan on giving up.

"I won't stop until I get it back," stated Parker.

News 4 reached out to Meta's press team several times Monday, but never heard back.

Vintage Market Days will take place at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds April 5-7. Each day will go from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

To buy tickets, click here.