North East Lincolnshire Council scammed out of £22k

North East Lincolnshire Council scammed out of £22k

North East Lincolnshire Council have lost £22,000 after being the victims of a scam by a fraudster.

The incident occurred in August when a member of staff was believed to have failed to verify the integrity of a request to change bank account details.

Councils are regularly the target of fraudsters as they hack email addresses and create spoof emails, acting as suppliers, requesting account detail changes.

This type of crime is becoming more and more prevalent in recent years as more people turn to cyber crime.

There was a 43 per cent rise in fraud and cyber crime in the past year as people turned to computer misuse in the pandemic.

Recently, the finance team managed to avoid a repeat of this incident and stopped a fraudster taking £32,000 from them.

A report regarding the incident states: “Whilst any loss to fraud is regrettable, it should be acknowledged that there were over 500 requests for bank account changes in the past two years, none of which was fraudulent.

“As the country comes out of lockdown restrictions and we establish a new ‘normal’, fraudsters will continue to exploit weaknesses.

“It is imperative that, if and where procedures were revised or relaxed as a consequence of the pandemic, these are reviewed to ensure that processes that had been put in place to prevent fraud are still appropriate and being followed.”

Changes have been made to prevent any further fraud incident taking money from the council.