In June, we faced significant internal challenges related to the company's long-term financial outlook and ownership structure. To address these issues, we temporarily suspended operations and initiated a restructuring process with a focus on long-term profitability. During this time, it became clear that continuing to work with the existing owners was no longer viable, and we terminated the partnership.
the production database access was limited to a single developer and myself with root access.
~snip~
At this point, we made the decision for the developer with the production database to take a backup and the DevOps engineer to terminate the services. This was the timeframe in which relationships went sour, etc. From this point, I no longer had access to any system or services. There was no technological or inappropriate handling of data in this case. It was purely a human factor. It can and does happen with many organizations. It is not a crime to trust people you work with.
Based on your initial statement, there were more owners of Betnomi beside you. And you had terminated the partnership with other owners to run it alone in a profitable way. You were blaming the other owners for the database leak (actually sold). But today you have said that, there was only one developer who has access to the production database except you. So, the 'existing owners' was a misleading part in your main post. Therefore, users database was either sold by you or the single developer. You are addressing users email address as private information, but it was sold to unknown authority for your irresponsibility. Because, you wanted to save money for ....
There are a lot of "why", but give the answer of these two questions for now
• Why were you deleting the messages from telegram group and banning those users who were asking about the issues?
• Why had you added those users to your '
distrusts list' who left negative feedback on your profile?
Don't blame other people (owners/partners/developer) for these again.