Cyber thieves steal $740,000 from Benton County. Employee fell for a common scam

Cyber criminals stole $740,000 from Benton County in a common phishing scam.

It follows Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland and the city of Ellensburg in falling victim to the fraud.

Thieves sent an email to Benton County last October claiming to be the construction firm working on county projects, including a major upgrade inside the Benton County jail in Kennewick.

“The initial fraudulent email, and the subsequent chain of emails, requested that the County update the contractor’s payment information,” said a county news release Thursday.

The county processed legitimate invoice bills from the construction firm and deposited the payment in November to the new account which was fraudulent.

Then in December, county employees figured out they’d been the victim of a scam.

“It was found that the fraudulent account had been frozen and subsequently closed by its banking institution after the deposit of county funds,” said the release.

However, about 3%, or $23,000, of the deposit, had already been taken from the account in several small transactions.

Federal authorities have seized what’s left, totaling about $717,000.

“We are continuing to work with federal authorities to have the seized funds returned to us as quickly as possible,” said the release.

The county is currently reviewing its policies and procedures to reduce the risk of a similar theft, said the release.

Similar Richland crime

The incident followed a widely reported similar scam in Richland.

In 2017 a federal lawsuit revealed that the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory had deposited a payment of $530,000 in a fraudulent bank account.

The payment was meant for Fowler General Construction of Richland, which had a contract to build a $9.8 million Collaboration Center on the PNNL campus in Richland.

PNNL had been notified by email in November 2016 that it needed to change the bank account for Fowler’s electronic payments.

PNNL made the change without checking with Fowler.

Battelle, which holds the DOE contract to operate PNNL, covered $430,000 of the fraudulent payment. The remaining $100,00 was recovered with the help of the bank where the money was sent and investigators.

The investigation was led by the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General.

The case has been at the center of an ongoing legal battle with a PNNL manager claiming whistleblower status as part of the investigation into the theft of taxpayer money.

Ellensburg revealed in August 2019 that it had received an email from a person identifying himself as the accountant for one if the city’s existing vendors which was receiving regular progress payments for ongoing construction work.

The city had been sending the vendor paper checks, but the email requested that payments instead be made by electronic transfer to an account at a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Texas.

City staff sent a payment of nearly $185,900, which did not go to the city vendor.

The Daily Record reported in October that the money was recovered, other than a bank handling fee, because the city discovered the cyber attack immediately and contacted Wells Fargo.

This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 10:05 AM.