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Theft by Deception

MBG-2022-06-0721

On June 27th, 2022, at approximately 11:49 am, a victim business contacted the police department about being deceived out of money via fraudulent transfers of money. The business, located in the 100 block of West Allen Street, advised an employee received an email about a payment due for an invoice. The invoice was attached to the email. The employee received another email from the CEO of the business advising the employee to make payment on the invoice. The employee made the payment. More emails advising the same were received by the employee. There were four emails sent between 6/13 and 6/21. The transactions were questioned by an employee in the finance department only after the payments were made. This is when it was discovered the emails and invoices were fraudulent, including the email from the CEO of the company. The transactions were sent to an online banking company and could not be reversed. Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to contact the police department.

This type of scam has been around and is hard to pick up due to the authentic looking emails and invoices sent. When receiving such emails, pay particular attention to the email address where the email was sent from. Often times there will be small differences in the email address which could alert you to a scam.