Ontario city stung for $503,000 in switched bank account fraud

By Howard Solomon for IT World Canada
Friday, June 14, 2019

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The municipality is refusing to make any further comment on how it happened. One possibility is the vendor’s email was hacked, so the email (or emails) the employee received was from a legitimate source. Another is that the criminal spoofed an email address similar to a person employed by the vendor. In one case the FBI noted a fake email ended in “.co” instead of .”com.”

“Humans remain the weakest link in any organization,” Ilia Kolochenko, founder and CEO of web security company ImmuniWeb,.noted after spotting a news story on the con. “Properly implemented security controls can reduce the risk of human error but not eliminate it.”

In a statement issued by the city Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward said the incident was committed “with falsified documents at a level of sophistication not typically seen, and we are taking the necessary steps to prevent it from happening in the future. This stresses just how important it is that we are all vigilant and recognize the signs of online fraud, phishing and other scams, and report them to the proper authorities — so that no one becomes a victim of this type of criminal activity.” Read Full Article