The Morning Call – Sands casino owner Sheldon Adelson has not been shy about voicing his political views, and critics of those views appeared to send a message Tuesday to the nation’s 11th richest man.

Hackers apparently took over the websites of Las Vegas Sands, releasing the personal information of some of its workers, including those employed at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem.

Websites run by the world’s largest gambling company appeared to have been hacked just after noon, showing anyone visiting the Las Vegas Sands casino Web pages a scrolling list of personal information that included employee Social Security numbers, emails and job titles.

The websites were shut down by the company by 12:45 p.m.

It’s unclear how many of the company’s nearly 50,000 worldwide employees were in the scroll, but the list running on the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem local Web page appeared to include only employees working in Bethlehem. Other casino websites run by Las Vegas Sands experienced a similar breach.

And when employees realized it, panic set in for some of them.

“It’s freaking me out,” said Joshua Cesanek, a “cage cashier” at the Bethlehem casino. “I can monitor my bank account and credit cards, but how do I monitor my Social Security number? Am I going to have to worry about this for years?”

Las Vegas Sands is the owner of the Sands Bethlehem, whose casino, hotel and shopping mall attract more than 8 million people to Bethlehem each year.

As of Tuesday evening, the websites for all of Sands’ global casinos — in Bethlehem, Las Vegas, Singapore and Macau, China — remained down as Sands staff tried to figure out who did what and why. Sands officials also said the hacking includes some internal office websites, which enabled the hackers to access the employee records.

The company’s email accounts also appeared to be affected.

“Company-operated websites have been hacked, as have some office productivity systems in the U.S.,” Sands Corp. spokesman Ron Reese said in a written statement. “The company is working closely with the appropriate law enforcement agencies to determine who initiated the hacking activity.

“In addition,” Reese said, “the company is using its IT experts to assess the damage and return the systems to full operations.”

The FBI declined to comment.

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