Athens city employee loses $721,976 to email spoofing scam involving fake accountant and fraudulent bank account

Summary

A city employee in Athens, Ohio, fell victim to a $721,976 cyber scam after receiving an email from a scammer posing as an accountant with Pepper Construction. The scammer, who infiltrated an existing email thread, convinced the city to redirect a payment for the new fire station to a fraudulent bank account. The scam began in late October when the scammers created fake email addresses nearly identical to the real accountant’s address, using alternate domains like pepperconstrcution.com and pepperconstructlon.com. On November 15, the city processed the payment into a checking account at Republic Bank & Trust. The scammer then sent follow-up emails pretending to have issues with the payment and requested a new bank account for future payments. On November 25, after the city’s account administrator expressed suspicion, the real accountant confirmed the emails were fraudulent. The city filed a lawsuit against the unknown scammers in early December, and in January, Republic Bank reported that $349,522 remained in the fraudulent account.