FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE) – The City of Fresno announced on Wednesday that it had lost $400,000 as part of a phishing scam in 2020. As the city continues working to recover the money, business IT experts warn scams like this can happen to anyone.
Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer says the money was lost after someone in charge of paying a contractor for work the city was having done didn’t realize bank account routing information wasn’t matched up correctly.
Business IT experts say there are ways to prevent this from happening again.
“If you don’t have the proper checks and balances in place or the proper training of personnel in place to be aware of these kinds of things, that they can happen and that they are common, then this type of thing can happen again and again and again,” explained business IT consultant, J. Colin Petersen.
Business IT consultant J. Colin Petersen says the City of Fresno losing $400,000 to an online phishing scam is all too common.
“More than 90% of security breaches have nothing to do with the technology, but everything to do with the humans operating the technology,” said Petersen.
Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer says in 2020 before he took office, an employee tried to send money to a contractor building the new police substation.
