Somehow, a whole city in California fell for an email scam! Hopefully, they learned their lesson about being cautious on the internet!
It was the city of Fresno, and they fell for a $400,000 internet scam in 2020 and then had the chutzpah to cover it up. They even went to the extent of denying a public record request in regards to the incident, according to recent reports.
This news is coming from the Fresno Bee, which is detailing the sordid saga of a government that was not only victimized but also proved that they too were untrustworthy.
It is called doing “damage control”, instead of being honest. Apparently, what happened was those city officials were scammed by a fake invoice that appeared to come from a city contractor. However, there was just one problem with that. They requested payment for a service that was never performed. Apparently, someone at Fresno’s city hall wasn’t doing their homework!
Another problem was that the invoice looked very official, so a city clerk went ahead and authorized the payment before anyone realized that it was possibly a scam.
“It is my understanding that it’s the single largest loss for the city, in the case of a fraud,” Councilmember Miguel Arias told The Bee.
“In an interview Wednesday, current Mayor Jerry Dyer said two payments were made. Arias said city officials believe the money was sent to an account in Africa,” The Bee initially reported.
The city called the FBI in for the case, but they were only able to recover $2,000. Additionally, in another show of incompetence, even though city officials believed that the money had gone to an account in Africa, the FBI counteracted that, saying they believed that the scammer was indeed American.
The Fresno Bee asked for a public record request regarding this issue, but the only response they received was the following:
“The City of Fresno has reviewed its files and did not locate records responsive to your request.” This was after the city said they needed an extension for the request.
According to The Fresno Bee report, “[City Attorney Doug] Sloan explained that the city attorney’s office searched for the words ‘wire fraud.’ Since those words didn’t appear in the emails … the city attorney’s office told The Bee there were no responsive records.”
However, reporters from the Fresno Bee were able to find plenty of records regarding this case of fraud.
Councilmember Arias was shocked at the city’s refusal to accept this record request.
“I can’t speak to why the administrative staff wouldn’t release something that’s clearly public interest and what I think is a public document, which is disturbing,” Arias told the paper.
Mayor Dyer tried to claim that he was advocating transparency, saying that he attempted to bring the issue to a closed session of the council.
“I felt the need as the incoming mayor to get off on the right foot and make sure that there was some transparency going on,” he told The Bee in an interview.
Arias noted that the council had felt “blindsided” by this fraud.
“When [Mayor Dyer] informed us of it, he was blindsided and surprised that council had not been informed of such a significant incident. So, credit to the mayor for disclosing it to the city as he came into office, and shame on the previous administrative staff that kept it from the council and the public,” Arias said.
Naturally, Fresno was beset by jokes about “Kenyan and Nigerian princes”, but what is more troubling is the lack of transparency. It puts the city of Fresno in a bad light, and it makes the average Joe wonder just what else they might be hiding.