14 DAY TRIAL // Employees from South Lanarkshire Council were tricked by scammers to deposit payments intended for a legit supplier into a rogue bank account.
South Lanarkshire is one of the largest administrative regions (council areas) in Scotland. The local authority is based in Hamilton and has around 16,000 employees.
The Register reports that at the end of July, a letter appearing to originate from a legitimate supplier was sent to the Council's financial department.
The official-looking letter announced a change of the company's bank account, that was normally used to receive payments.
Unfortunately, the Council's employees did not check back with the supplier and deposited a total of £102,000 ($160,000) into an account controlled by African scammers.
"Forged documents instructing a change of bank details were sent to the council and used to obtain fraudulent payment of £102,000.
"We are co-operating with an ongoing national police investigation. The council are confident no member of staff is involved in the fraud," a Council spokesman said.
A national investigation into the matter has been started, in order to determine if other local authorities were scammed in a similar way.
It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that they were, considering that this scam has been going around for a while now.
Last month we reported that three Kenyans were jailed in US for defrauding the governments of several states in a similar manner.
The fraudsters began by creating dummy companies with names similar to those of well known suppliers and service providers.
They then sent direct deposit authorization forms to the authorities asking that future payments be made into bank accounts associated with the rogue companies.
The gang succeeded to steal $3.379 millions from the governments of West Virginia, Kansas, Ohio and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.