Malware attack severely disrupts West Palm Beach solo's practice.

West Palm Beach attorney James "Randy" Ackley has an unusual but urgent message for fellow Bar members--don't open emails from the Law Offices of James R. Ackley, P. A.

A sole practitioner who specializes in foreclosure defense, Ackley thinks his firm's network was infected by malware that was hiding in an e-reader attached to a digital transcript he recently ordered.

Disaster struck soon after Ackley opened the viewer to read the transcript. Email traffic screeched to a halt and an archive of 12,000 emails vanished. Soon, his office phones were ringing off the hook.

"I've had calls from D.C., Virginia, Texas, California, people saying they were getting these emails from me with these contracts attached and asking me if they are real," Ackley said.

Nearly a month after the attack--and three weeks after reporting the incident to the FBI--his phone hasn't stopped ringing. In the 20 minutes it took Ackley to describe the problem to a reporter, he received six calls, one from Massachusetts, another from West Virginia.

The calls are coming mostly from real estate attorneys, mortgage brokers, mortgage servicers, Realtors--professions that often move large sums of money through wire transfers.

The callers are asking about an email that bears Ackley's name and appears to be coming from his firm's domain. It invites recipients to open an "executed contract." Clicking on the icon only produces an error message, and a request for personal data.

"Don't...