A sophisticated email scam was used to take almost $550K from the city of East Lansing. (Getty)
LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — East Lansing is partnering with multiple law enforcement agencies to recover nearly $550,000 that was stolen from the city in an elaborate email scam.
According to the city of East Lansing, someone took the money in a scam that used a compromised vendor’s email account to reroute the payment for a legitimate bill to a different account. The engineers of the cybercrime were able to overcome East Lansing’s financial validation processes, resulting in almost $550,000 stolen.
East Lansing’s investigation is still ongoing and is receiving help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Michigan State Police.
“We want to reiterate that the integrity of the City’s departments was not compromised. It is thanks to the quick response and due diligence of our well-trained staff that we were able to identify this cybercrime as quickly as we did,” said East Lansing City Manager Robert Belleman. “We are confident that we are doing everything we need to do to recover the funds with the assistance of the financial institution.”