Man accused for stealing money from the Fort Worth city via a phishing scam

A man has been accused for stealing money (i.e. almost $700,000) from the Fort Worth city via a phishing scam, as per the arrest warrant affidavit. The theft has been revealed on Wednesday (i.e. on May 15, 2019) in a whistleblower lawsuit that was filed by former IT manager.

The former IT manager alleges that he reported about the theft as well as various other cybersecurity problems to the Fort Worth city officials, but got fired in retaliation. As per the lawsuit, the hackers stole over $516,000 from the city accounts and then placed it in the offshore accounts.

The Fort Worth city officials have replied in a statement on Thursday (i.e. on May 16, 2019) that the city "had been the victim of fraud in late 2017 when, due to human error, a vendor payment was redirected to a bad actor".

48 years-old Gbenga A. Fadipe is charged for theft of property of more than $300,000 in the Tarrant County. As per arrest warrant affidavit, this theft takes place when the accounts payable department of Fort Worth city has received a request for change of account in Oct. 2017. The request, which was in reality a scam email, seems to be from the Imperial Construction, who was doing business with Fort Worth city. The email requested the accounts payable department to change electronic deposit from the Plains Capital Bank account to one new Chase Bank account. The email also included a check copy with new account as well as routing numbers.

D.B. Bell, the Fort Worth Detective, wrote in affidavit that "Fort Worth's Account Payable department made the change of bank accounts with the belief that Imperial Construction had changed banks, according to the documents received".

The Fort Worth Detective wrote that as per the affidavit, Fadipe had access to new Chase Bank account and thus withdrew money between Nov. 2017 and Jan. 2018 from the Chase branches of Houston.

William Birchett alleges that he got fired in Feb. in retaliation for informing (i.e. reporting) to the officials that cybersecurity of the city was severely compromised, which also includes that Fort Worth city lied about their compliance with the crime database regulations of FBI, and had left Fort Worth city employees personal and medical information accessible to anybody having access to internet.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the District Court of Dallas County, describes that Birchett reported about his findings along with a proposal for fixing the problems to acting CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of the city, Kevin Gunn, and its acting chief technology officer, Roger Wright.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/28/2019