Are hackers playing a joke on Tweeter?

Hackers have apparently broken into Tweeter's website and posted a picture of President George W. Bush on the homepage with a message about the bankrupt chain's owner and restructuring officer: "Don't trust either of them!!!"

By late morning, however, it appeared that either the hackers had taken their post down or that the website was no longer operational, perhaps overwhelmed by a throng of traffic.

The incident came hours after the electronics chain abruptly shut its 60 stores and fired 600 people across the county in the middle of a liquidation sale and just days before the company was set to close for good. (To read a story in today's Globe on Tweeter, please click here.)

The employees, including about 150 in Massachusetts, are still owed at least one week's pay, vacation time, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses that were promised as part of the liquidation sale, according to five store managers and executives who declined to be named because they are still owed money. More than $14 million of merchandise, including goods already paid for by customers, are sitting in the locked stores.

The owners of the chain, Schultze Asset Management, shut down Tweeter and filed for Chapter 7 after they paid off millions of dollars to the largest secured creditor - Wells Fargo.

Schultze Asset Management, a New York investment firm that had also loaned money to Tweeter, was the second-biggest creditor and decided against putting additional money into the company to cover expenses to wind down the operations. Tweeter had planned to close its shops on Sunday.

On Tweeter's website earlier this morning, there was a message about George Schultze, owner of Schultze Asset Management, calling him the "George Bush of Tweeter!: He made promise after promise for over a year. In the end, the promises turned to one big finger."

Schultze and representatives of his firm, which bought Tweeter out of its first bankruptcy in July 2007 for $38 million, could not be reached for comment.

The website post also criticized Craig Boucher, who served as chief restructuring officer for Tweeter: "Every time he made a public move, he addressed the Tweeter employees - "there's still hope; keep coming to work; we'll actually pay you ..."

Boucher declined to comment yesterday, except to say, "Things will take care of themselves in due time."

In its Chapter 7 filing yesterday, Tweeter requested $900,000 to be put in a fund for unpaid wages, commissions, and payroll taxes for employees.

Without the use of Schultze's cash collateral, "the debtors cannot continue to operate under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code," the filing said.
(By Jenn Abelson, Globe staff)