Washington dchool district defrauded $346,000 in phishing scam
May 4—The Adna School District was defrauded of
The district announced the fraud in a detailed email to The Chronicle on Thursday, noting that after the activity was confirmed, the district notified the
"This is a significant financial attack on a small rural district such as ours," Nelson wrote. "It is too soon to see just how the loss of these funds will impact our district going forward. All we can say today is that we will work diligently to minimize the impact to our students and staff in the classroom."
Nelson explained how the funds were lost and attempted to accept responsibility as the leader of the school district.
"This was an amazingly sophisticated and precise scam," Nelson stated. "As superintendent, I am responsible for careful handling of the public's funds. With this contract I felt we had created a textbook system for managing funds in a public construction project. But we were tricked and it cost our district a significant amount of money and I take responsibility for this mistake. I apologize to our families and the community of
In explaining the scam, Nelson noted the school district is in the midst of a
"In setting this contract up, we established a multi-step procedure for reviewing and approving payments for the work done," the letter from the district states. "Our process is as follows: general contractor sends monthly payment application (bill) reflecting work completed up to that point. Each bill is sent to seven people for review including the dIstrict's project architect, superintendent, district business manager, school principal, our district project manager and former Superintendent and the general contractor. Then, after feedback, and line by line confirmation by the architect and project manager that the work has been completed using the materials listed, the architect sends approval to the general contractor to submit that month's completed bill to the district for payment."
According to the district, the process had been used through the prior five months as the district paid just over
"This same review process was used prior to receiving the next bill for
The "criminal enterprise" continued to communicate with the district about the payment. That's when the district reached out to the contractor, the Treasurer's Office and its bank, leading to the determination that the district had been scammed.
The district does not know the status of the
The district stated in the letter it has taken steps to assure a similar situation doesn't unfold in the future.
"We have taken the following steps to assure that this will never happen again: from this point forward (for the)
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