The city of Fresno, California, lost more than $600,000 to a phishing scam in 2020, a loss that could have been avoided if Finance Department employees had followed city policy, a Fresno County grand jury report revealed on Thursday.
Construction began on a new police substation in southeast Fresno in April 2019, according to the report. The contractor requested to be paid by physical checks.
The Fresno Finance Department received an email in January 2020 from the perpetrator of the scam, who the city assumed was an employee of the construction company, requesting to receive payments through an automated clearing house transfer instead. In the following weeks, the department authorized two electronic payments to the perpetrator totaling $613,737.
The city learned about the scam when the construction company threatened to walk off the job over lack of payment, the
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