SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The Mount Vernon School District says it became victim of wire fraud in June, per a news release.
The district says there’s no evidence any current or past employee purposefully did anything wrong; instead, it looks like “professional scammers” are behind the crime. The statement from the district says details were relayed to the Davison County Sheriff’s Office and the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation is also involved.
Jessie Schmidt, vice president of the Better Business Bureau’s South Dakota region, and Sioux Falls Police Department spokesperson Sam Clemens shared Friday how wire fraud might take place.
“This type of fraud escalates during summer months because people are on vacation, and you have people doing jobs that maybe that, this is not what their full-time job is,” Schmidt said.
Clemens highlights how a business could fall victim to spoofing.
“‘Hey we’re updating our account, we had this one before, this is the new one, so please use this one,'” Clemens said. “Then that business or organization thinks that’s a legitimate email, so they change it on their end and then unbeknownst to them, they’re sending money right to the scammers.”
A small detail might indicate a huge difference.
“If you’re talking about a business, a lot of these emails that come through look legitimate, it’s from somebody that they do business with on a regular basis, there may be some regular billing, regular correspondence, but they’re going to change things just slightly,” Clemens said. “There may be an extra hyphen or an ‘s’ added to somebody’s name.”
“Maybe they’ll add another initial, so it still looks like you are emailing me or I am emailing you, and they say, ‘Hey I know I’m out of the office, but I forgot to approve these few invoices before I left, and they need to get paid,'” Schmidt said.
Schmidt also says it’s good practice to keep updating anti-virus software.
