Potential kratom ban in Iowa City prompts fraudulent emails

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – Iowa City may ban the herbal substance kratom, and the potential ban has prompted suspicious emails to officials.

Kratom can produce opioid- and stimulant-like effects. It is also largely unregulated.

Lots of people are against the Iowa City ban, or at least it would seem that way if you didn’t look too closely.

Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague said he got an email from a friend. It was against the ban of kratom. It had her name and her Iowa City address. The giveaway: she’d just called Teague and mentioned she was living in Des Moines.

“I forward her the email and a text and said, ‘Did you send this?’ She said, ‘Absolutely not,’” said Teague.

City officials said they received almost 100 of these emails.

According to Bobby Kuzma, Director of Offensive Cyber Operations for ProCircular in Coralville, sending emails that seem to be from real Iowa City citizens would actually be incredibly easy to do.

“At a guess, the names were probably pulled from a voter registration list so that they appear to be members of the community or from a property owner list,” said Kuzma.

He added, “It’s something that someone with basic computer skills could probably throw together in under 30 minutes with free software.”

Kuzma said, when it comes to hearing from constituents, elected officials needed to “trust but verify.”

He added, “It’s obviously important for our elected officials to pay attention to what’s going on with their constituents and what their constituents’ concerns are. But when there’s a sudden surge of feedback about a particular topic, diving in a little deeper absolutely makes sense.”

Luckily, that’s exactly what officials in Iowa City have been doing.

“There’s a lot of weird stuff happening with this,” said Teague.

TV9 did reach out to the City Clerk’s office in Iowa City to get a copy of the email to share with Kuzma, but we haven’t received it yet.

The meeting Tuesday was just a first consideration; the kratom ban ordinance will be back on the agenda at the council’s next meeting.

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