BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. (KDVR) — Boulder County was able to recover more than $230,000 from a phishing scam back in September.
According to Boulder County, on Sept. 30, 2022. the county was a target of a cyber attack and mistakenly sent a check valued at $237,241.18 to a fraudulent account. The hackers used information from the vendor to create a spearfishing email that was sent to the county.
A detective with the Boulder County Digital Forensics Lab was able to trace the funds to a bank account in the U.S. where they were still showing the money as an available balance.
According to Boulder County, investigators were able to freeze the funds in the account and prevent the money to move to multiple accounts outside the U.S.
On Dec. 17, 2022, the full amount of the check, $237,241.18, was returned to Boulder County following the phishing incident.
“We take great pride in our work and in the controls we have in place to detect and prevent fraud,” County Administrator Jana 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.”