Georgia city scammed out of $455K

"The individual has cashed a total of four checks in the amount of $455,285.47," Porta said in an email statement on Jan. 27. "A stop payment was issued on the fifth check before the individual was able to receive these funds."

In mid-January, The Daily Tribune News obtained documents indicating the City of Cartersville had issued almost $120,000 to the Illinois resident.

In an email statement from late December, Porta said the recipient of the ill-gotten check was a person claiming to represent K.M. Davis Contracting Co., a firm that is conducting sewer line improvements along Mission Road.

"Based upon email communication with our accounts payable clerk, the address for checks to pay K.M. Davis Contracting Co. were changed to a Naperville, Illinois, address and five checks over a several month period were sent to this address," Porta stated in the email.

The City, however, wasn't contacted by an actual representative of K.M. Davis Contracting Co. concerning the missing payments until mid-December of last year.

"Chief Frank McCann's investigators are working this case, but as of now it looks like the first check issued to the criminal in the amount of $119,552,82 is a loss to the City in which I will be filing an insurance claim to, hopefully, recoup most of this loss," Porta stated. "The other four checks were cashed within the last 60 days and Ameris Bank (the City's bank) are treating these as fraudulent and state that we should get our money back."

As of Jan. 27, Porta said the City is not aware of any arrests being made in connection with the fraud case.

"At this time, Truist Bank has notified us they will reimburse us for the first check in the amount of $119,662.82, but we have not received this reimbursement as of today," Porta said. "The remaining three checks were issued through Ameris Bank who the City switched to for banking services and Ameris is pursuing reimbursement for these three checks in the amount of $335,622.65, but at this time we have not received confirmation of when we will receive reimbursement for these checks."

In the interim, Porta said the City's finance department has drafted new internal policies "which will be reviewed and implemented within the next month to help in preventing this from happening again."

Despite the incident, Porta said the fraud case has not resulted in any slowdowns for the scheduled Mission Road sewer work.

"The contractor has received payment for all outstanding invoices," he said, "and has continued to work on this project without any delay."