Its come to light that a man defrauded the City of Saskatoon posing as Chief Financial Officer for a prominent construction company. Not many details were released as there is an on going police investigation underway and once its completed, a human resources investigation will begin.
Neither the name of the fraudster nor the company name has been released yet, the City of Saskatoon police department confirmed that this is the biggest fraud case the city police has investigated. However, no further details were provided.
A year ago, City of Ottawa was subject to a fraud of $130,000 by an individual posing as Ottawa City’s mayor. However, the wired funds were seized in time by the U.S. Secret Service Department.
Such phishing scams are referred to as whaling, where the targets are high-level individuals.
The interesting thing about the City of Saskatoon fraud incident is that the perpetrator was consulting for several weeks before he managed to successfully get the transfer of $1.04M in one transaction. It’s a mystery how this was allowed to happen and it boasts the question of whether there were other individuals involved, as the perpetrator was representing a prominent construction company for weeks in person.
The investigation must explore all avenues, expanding to the office of the mayor and the office of the construction company, to uncover the full truth, no leaf must be left unturned.