Park Slope Juice Bar Claims White House Hacked Website

A Park Slope juice bar owner claims his website has been hacked with “No Fat Asses” tacked on to the end of the company’s “Authentic Healthy Sustainable” slogan.

The owner of Stoop Juice, Jose Franco, discovered the unauthorized alteration to his website on Tuesday after being away and offline for about a week.

“The first thing I thought was the person who manages the website for me played a joke, so I went into WordPress and my login wasn’t accepted. I panicked,” Franco explained over the telephone on Wednesday.

After reaching out to his website manager, who had not played a joke and could not fix the problem, Franco reached out to WordPress who advised him to contact his internet provider.

Not receiving a satisfactory response from his service provider, Franco enlisted the help of two friends who work in tech, but the exasperated shop owner admits, “I’m not holding my breath.”

When he first discovered that he was hacked, Franco wondered who would do this to him. “I’m a nice guy…. Who would have anything against me?”

Then the story takes a strange turn. In a statement Franco posted on the Stoop Juice Facebook page Tuesday he suggests the President may have a (tiny) hand in all this.

“Personally, I think it’s someone in the White House,” Franco says. “I’ve been pretty anti-Trump on my Twitter page before, during, and after the election. I also received several phone calls from someone who sounds like the President,” he adds.

A quick scan of the Stoop Juice Twitter feed reveals a number of inspirational messages and doesn’t turn up any egregious political tweets, though he has retweeted harsh messages from celebrities and politicians. Franco describes his tweets directed at Trump as “well-informed” and “very sensible.”

Franco says he began receiving strange telephone calls at work about five weeks ago in which the caller tells him, “Just stop complaining and being a little bitch,” (which does sort of sound like Trump speak).

Franco does not have caller ID and cannot trace the telephone numbers. “One time I’m pretty sure it sounded like the president,” he insists. “In retrospect he’s the only person….”

Franco opened Stoop Juice at 443 7th Avenue six years ago after his mother’s battle with breast cancer and his father’s death from prostate cancer. “We have a serious message but this is happening…. I see the humor in it but at the same time I want to get my website running,” he says.

Whether they take his claims seriously or not, people are definitely talking about the juice bar’s alleged White House hack. Franco says on Wednesday afternoon about 20 people walked into the shop asking about the scandal, and he’s received a hundred calls from customers, friends, and family. He says some of his relatives have advised him to “just shut up and stop talking about politics in the shop.”

Whether Trump is behind the hack or not, the small business owner wants to resolve the problem and remove the rude message from his site. “I don’t want to offend anybody,” he says.

Any techies out there know how to resolve Franco’s website problem?