Boulder County Targeted By Fraudsters

Insurance expected to help cover the loss

Boulder County, Colo. - Following a cyber attack experienced by one of Boulder County’s vendors, the county mistakenly sent a check valued at $238,000 to a fraudulent account. The hackers used information obtained from the vendor to create a spearfishing email to the county that appeared to be from the vendor, resulting in a check being sent incorrectly to a fraudulent account.

“Although the county has safeguards in place to prevent these types of frauds from occurring, and we successfully thwart attacks by fraudsters several times a year, we did not catch this one in time to prevent the check from being cashed,” County Administrator Jana Petersen said. “Fraudsters continue to get more and more creative in their approaches, and we continue to enhance our safeguards to make sure to minimize the risk to taxpayer dollars.”

The county purchases insurance for criminal activity, and insurance proceeds are expected to cover most of the loss after appropriate investigations take place. The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office will be investigating this crime and will work with federal law enforcement partners during the investigation.

“We take great pride in our work and in the controls we have in place to detect and prevent fraud,” Petersen said. “It’s so frustrating that this happened, and we will learn from the experience and continuously work to review and enhance our controls.”

The incident is now part of an active investigation and law enforcement will release any future information relating to the investigation in due course.