Fort Lauderdale recovers $1.2M stolen last year during cyber scam, officials say
FORT LAUDERDALE -- The city of Fort Lauderdale has recovered over $1 million after the municipal government was scrammed out of the money last year, authorities said Thursday during a news conference.
Police said they are still searching for the suspects and the investigation
"Today we are here to announce that FLPD was able to completely recover $1.2 million," Police Chief Bill Schultz said. "The City of Fort Lauderdale was among a number of municipalities targeted in this incident due to ongoing construction of our new police headquarters."
Police said the theft happened when scammers posed as a legitimate city contractor named Moss Construction and sent a bill to the city for a payment for ongoing building at the new police department..
"There's a whole series of documentation and forms and things that have to be provided to the city for us to recognize it as a valid payment request," said Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis. "This particular perpetrator had all of that."
Investigators said the money was sent to the account of other innocent victims involved in fake online romances with the scammers.
Detectives say those romance victims did not know they were part of a scam. Police stopped the money from moving offshore just in time.
"The receiving bank flagged the transaction as potentially fraudulent and notified the city," Schultz said. "They located them fairly quick, they froze the funds and were able to retrieve them back."
Investigators say scams like this target real estate companies, attorneys, insurance providers, yacht brokers and other businesses that routinely make large payments. There are ways to avoid being duped.
"Never change banking information via email, instead call the known contact," Schultz said. "Email directly to a known address rather than to a chain, carefully review the email domain."
In a written statement, Moss Construction said: "We are happy to hear that the City of Fort Lauderdale has recovered the money from this attempted fraud. Moss had nothing to do with the scam. Our systems were never compromised, and our information remained safe and secure. We fully cooperated with the city and law enforcement authorities to help them get to the bottom of the case. The facts are clear: bad actors used our good reputation and standard public information found on a basic internet search to try and cause harm."