Online Thieves Scam State of Utah out of $2.5 Million
Joel Hruska, arstechnica: States have been slashing funding allocations and contemplating tax increases as a means of balancing their budgets, which makes a recent revelation concerning the state of Utah’s treasury all the more embarrassing.
According to investigators, state officials recently uncovered evidence that some $2.5 million had been transferred from the state’s coffers into various holding accounts. The scheme is thought to have originated in Africa, possibly in Nigeria, but is not the same sort of attack that’s typically referenced when a person or article refers to a “Nigerian scam.”
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the chain of events leading to the theft were set in motion when one of the would-be thieves (or an associate) acquired a vendor number for the University of Utah’s design and construction department. That information allowed the miscreants to forge documents, changing the bank account information for the account in question. Once the account was under new management, the criminals invoiced the state of Utah for various imaginary repairs and/or expenses with instructions to deposit the cash into the hacked account.
