NuTSR Financial Data Breach

The ongoing saga of “TSR3” continues as Justin LaNasa, owner of “TSR LLC”, allegedly stores and has emailed to others a spreadsheet containing customer financial information stored without any form of encoding or encryption.

In a video released by Don Semora of Wizard Tower Games, Semora claims Justin LaNasa emailed him a spreadsheet in May 2022 that included financial information from customers and business partners including full names, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and even credit card numbers, all stored in plain text with no encoding or encryption. This includes customers of TSR or Dungeon Hobby Shop’s webstores purchasing products including Cult of Abaddon, Dungeon Crawl: The Board Game, TSR Dice, and others.

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Screenshots of the spreadsheet (with private information redacted) show up in the video starting at the nine minute mark.

Wizard Tower Games also commented in the EN World thread “The Full & Glorious History of NuTSR” offering to confirm if anyone’s personal information was part of the spreadsheet he received. According to David Flor, transactions with the companies are processed under the name “Port City Kava”, an oxygen bar and vape/ecig store run by Justin LaNasa in North Carolina.

For those unfamiliar with the Saga of the TSR Trademark, EN World has a timeline of events with links to more information going back to the start in June of 2021 and, at the time of writing, updated through July 22, 2022.

The video from Semora is the most recent entry in a back-and-forth between himself and LaNasa following a Twitter post from Wizard Tower Games on August 29 confirming the company received two subpoenas related to the lawsuit with Wizards of the Coast. Michael K. Hovermale, former employee of TSR LLC, confirmed he also received a subpoena related to the lawsuit and confirmed in a post on EN World that he retained all information from his time working for LaNasa and informed LaNasa of this in June of 2022. In a video titled “OPEN LETTER LANASA” posted on September 1, Don Semora says he received a text message from LaNasa accusing Semora and Hovermale of “photoshopping documents”. The video consists of Semora posting screenshots of documents he claims were sent to him from LaNasa. In response, LaNasa claimed the documents in the video were Photoshopped by posting his own screenshots and calling Semora a "liar" on social media including in the title of a channel on the TSR Discord server, according to a screenshot from the private server posted by Kim Wincen. Semora responded with the video posted earlier today containing the spreadsheet along with other screenshots.

The trial between TSR LLC, the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum LLC, and Justin LaNasa v. Wizards of the Coast is scheduled for a jury trial in October 2023.

 

[Rabulias]

The $100M number may have been an exaggeration, but multiple sources have told me he expected to get at least six figures.

I think it was one of Don's videos (now made private) that showed the text exchange where LaNasa used the term "six figures," which is anywhere from $100,000 to $999,999, very far from $100 million.

 

[CleverNickName]

NuTSR is kind of like some bizarre variant hydra with the following traits:

Shoot Foot. As a bonus action, the NuTSR hydra can shoot one of its own feet.

Multiple Feet. The NuTSR hydra has multiple feet. Each turn it needs to roll an Integrity saving throw to avoid tripping over its own feet, landing prone on a failure. If the NuTSR hydra has any active sock puppets (see below), this saving throw is at disadvantage.

Regrow Feet. At the end of its turn, it grows two feet for each foot that was shot off since its last turn. If the NuTSR hydra is subjected to the social media silence spell, this trait does not function.

Sock Puppet. As an action, the NuTSR hydra can create a sock puppet for each active foot that it has.

That's a lot of clown shoes.

 

[darjr]

Fundamentally, what I expect to see happen is that WotC will steamroll these child-cartoon-villains, and will henceforth rabidly protect the TSR name, while at the same time not making it a core product people will constantly google (dragging up this embarrassing episode in perpetuity). I don't know what that will look like, but the cheeky part of my brain imagines a yearly publication that they sell exclusively in a store in Hasbro HQ (past a point where you have to badge-in to access) for $1.00 that is nothing but a list of other words and phrases they want to keep legal control over (such as Star Frontiers). Or something of that nature -- nothing vital to a business interest but which protects them from future headaches like this.

WotC has already done this with the license. But with a quality product and not some garbage thing. The book Art and Arcana is the prime example. The Goodman Games OAR books is another.

Also the compiled previous edition adventures is another, though I’m not sure those contain company logos.

Finally everything from older editions available on DMsGuild, some in print.

 

[darjr]

I think it was one of Don's videos (now made private) that showed the text exchange where LaNasa used the term "six figures," which is anywhere from $100,000 to $999,999, very far from $100 million.

He also said 100m in one of those message exchanges. But I think it was just Lesser Lanasian striking again.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Spoiler: I think there might be some misunderstandings about what's going on.

I think there might be some misunderstandings about what's going on.

Justin LaNasa registered the name "TSR" along with some associated logos as trademarks for his company, TSR LLC, along with a registration for the name "Star Frontiers". He does claim ownership of the name "TSR" as he attempted to get Jayson Elliot to license the name back from him for his company also called TSR (now called Solarian Games).

Wizards of the Coast currently uses the trademarks "TSR", "Star Frontiers", and many others along with the graphic logos that Justin LaNasa registered as they sell reprints of classic TSR-era modules and the original Star Frontiers game on DMs Guild and/or DriveThruRPG. Star Frontiers in particular came up when Evil Hat games also attempted to register the trademark but, after talking with Wizards of the Coast, backed down. It was then that Wizards put the original Star Frontiers for sale on DMs Guild.

When LaNasa filed for the trademarks, Wizards of the Coast filed an objection to their registration before it was finalized. LaNasa sued Wizards of the Coast for the right to use the trademarks, then Wizards of the Coast counter-sued for LaNasa violating their trademarks. The trial will determine who owns the trademarks and how much (if any) damages the other party will have to pay.

It should be noted that, under United States law, you do not need to register a trademark for it to be legally protected, but registering the trademark does give you more legal protections than if you do not. Just because Wizards of the Coast allowed the registration to lapse does not mean that they "lost" the trademark as other things have to occur for that to happen. And that's what the court will decide.

I don't think anyone was not aware of this, or confused about anything. This all started because the lapsed registration made LaNasa think he could acquire and then squat on the name TSR and make WotC pay him to go away. I think WotC will make flagrantly clear that this line of attack didn't, and will never, work.

WotC has already done this with the license. But with a quality product and not some garbage thing. The book Art and Arcana is the prime example. The Goodman Games OAR books is another.

Also the compiled previous edition adventures is another, though I’m not sure those contain company logos.

Finally everything from older editions available on DMsGuild, some in print.

Indeed. It's really unclear if LaNasa and company didn't know about the DMsG reprints (unlikely, since they also complained about the disclaimers on DMsG products), didn't make the connection, or didn't think that re-issues of old products counted as keeping trademarked IP in commercial use.

 

[DLIMedia]

I don't think anyone was not aware of this, or confused about anything. This all started because the lapsed registration made LaNasa think he could acquire and then squat on the name TSR and make WotC pay him to go away. I think WotC will make flagrantly clear that this line of attack didn't, and will never, work.

I'm really hoping WotC to do what Disney commonly does and make an example of Justin. Destroy him so thoroughly that no one would ever dream of coming anywhere near their trademarks ever again.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think it was one of Don's videos (now made private) that showed the text exchange where LaNasa used the term "six figures," which is anywhere from $100,000 to $999,999, very far from $100 million.

We know LaNasa is not good with grammar - perhaps he's not familiar with the concept of "orders of magnitudes" either? (... and to be fair, that's something that is frequently misunderstood).

 

[Ancalagon]

so it is now "today", what was supposed to happen?

@Abstruse so "today" is now "yesterday", what was supposed to happen? I still want to know

 

[Faolyn]

I'm pretty sure that's tricky unless he's very carefully accounting revenue for the two businesses so they can be taxed by the appropriate states.

He can't proofread properly. He posted a video of him making women wrestling in grits without realizing how bad it would look for him. There's no way he's very careful about his finances.

 

[pantsorama]

I don't think anyone said the FTC regulates it; we've been talking about how if they aren't, they lose their ability to use that service (i.e., MC and Visa mandate it). So when you quoted me saying it's not required, it threw me off because I was talking about from MC/Visa, not FTC. I was only talking about FTC in the context of how he's handling the breach.

Right. While contractually required is not legally required it stills falls under the category of, you know, required.