North Lincolnshire Council loses £49k to 'sophisticated' email scam

A council has been conned out of £49,000 after fraudsters duped the authority into paying the money into the wrong bank account.

North Lincolnshire Council (NLC) lost the cash in August 2021 after falling victim to a "sophisticated" email scam, known as mandate fraud.

It said the fraud had prompted a review of payment procedures, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

About £44,000 of the stolen money had been recovered, it added.

According to council documents the crooks hacked a supplier's email address to trick the authority into changing the account details before transferring the cash.

An NLC spokesperson said: "The fraudster had access to all the supplier's previous correspondence and used this to carry out a sophisticated scam using correct names, order numbers and other compelling information to convince the council this was a genuine transaction."

They said the incident was reported to the police.

The council report added that following a review "a number of improvements were identified and have been implemented, providing additional security to the process".

In a separate incident also in August 2021, North East Lincolnshire Council admitted it had been scammed out of £22,000 in a similar scheme.

The council said the loss was highly regrettable, and it had reported the crime to Action Fraud.

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