Phishing scam in Malden leads to a huge loss of money

MALDEN Mo. (KBSI) – Emails are not safe to send in the city of Malden. City leaders say as they assess the impact of a phishing scam that led to the loss of over 200 thousand dollars for the city of Malden.

Mayor Denton Kooyman says this past Friday evening an employee working for the city went to purchase equipment for a city project and one email changed everything.

Kooyman says the email appeared to be from a real company with one small change that was hard to spot.

“They had stolen the correct invoice and put the invoice back in with this email. The only thing different was two letters. They change one letter in the name and one letter in the address.”

Kooyman says he will not release the name of this individual who didn’t catch the fraud at this time, but his heart goes out to this employee as it was an unfortunate mistake.

“They have been with the city longer than I’ve been mayor. They have been promoted throughout the city as long as I am mayor, and I have given them the promotion, so I take this to heart a lot too.”

He says he understands accidents happen; however, a lot of money was at stake that the city will not get back.

“$274,000. It was a large amount that’s the hard part if it was something simple and small it’s just a really big amount of money.”

Public of Safety Director, Jeff Mitchell is investigating the issue as he contacted the Highway Patrol and from there troopers contacted the FBI.

“Being on that investigation right now to find out, I’ll try to track the email down of where the wire transfer went because there was a wire transfer so that’s where we’re at.”

Mitchell says not a lot of information can be released at this time as they are still working on finding out more pieces to this case it just takes time.

“Now the investigation is so we haven’t found out anything new yet because of the time it takes to track something like that down it’s just going to take a little while.”

Mayor Kooyman says phishing can happen to anyone at any time and what people need to look for going forward.

“This happens to big cities like this all the time, happens to small cities, happens to little old ladies. Everybody needs to be more proactive in their emails and with their doing pain online and stuff.”