Boulder County recovers $238,000 it lost in scam

A Boulder County Sheriff's Office detective traced nearly a quarter of a million dollars which the county lost last year in a "spearfishing" scam and recovered the entire amount. 

The county lost the money in September of 2022 when a fraudster sent an email claiming to be a vendor. That legitimate vendor had information stolen in a cyberattack, according to a Boulder County press release. Thus, the vendor's request for payment appeared legitimate. 

However, the county soon discovered the $237,241.18 check was sent to a fraudulent account. 

"Although the county has safeguards in place to prevent these types of frauds from occurring, and we successfully thwart attacks by fraudsters several times a year, we did not catch this one in time to prevent the check from being cashed," County Administrator Jana Petersen said at the time.

The Boulder County detective, a member of the Boulder County Digital Forensics Lab, tracked down the money to a bank account where it still showed the entire balance. The account's funds were frozen and Boulder County received the full amount of funds in December.  

Boulder County did not identify where the funds were located, but did thank Penn Township Police Department in Pennsylvania in last week's follow-up press release. 

The United States Secret Service and JPMorgan Chase & Company's fraud team also participated in the investigation. 

No one has been arrested at this time, and the investigation is still active.

"This incident has prompted several improvements, the county stated in its press release. "County accounting teams have received additional training to identify vendor impersonation fraud and how to request help with verification of suspicious requests. An independent verification step has been added to our vendor payment instruction change process. Finally, our email security tools have been configured to warn users about email domains which are newly registered, and those which are only one or two characters different from our partner organizations."