Mississauga man arrested for scamming Hamilton charity out of $94K, police say | CBC News

A 33-year-old Mississauga man has been arrested after what Peel Regional Police are calling a “spear phishing fraud” against Good Shepherd, a well-known charity in Hamilton.

Richard MacPhee, chief executive officer of Good Shepherd, told CBC Hamilton the organization received an invoice in February for work done by a contractor known to the charity.

Peel police said in a media release it turns out that was from a scammer who compromised the contractor’s email account and was impersonating the contractor.

The fraudster sent the charity an invoice for $94,000 in outstanding payments and asked that he money go into a new bank account, police said.

“Good Shepherd was advised to send outstanding payments of over $94,000 to a new bank account. Once they learned that the funds were not received by the appropriate contractor, police were contacted,” police said in the release.

According to police, the man was arrested on Sept. 29 and “charged with possession of property obtained by crime.” 

Peel Regional Police Const. Sarah Patten told CBC Hamilton the man was released to attend court on Oct. 30. 

Sophistication of scam was ‘pretty extensive’

MacPhee said his reaction was “one of shock” when he learned the scam.

“Actually [it was] also one of confusion because the sophistication of the scam was pretty extensive when we did the research,” McPhee said in an interview.

“We ourselves weren’t breached in terms of confidentiality or anything like that but the vendor’s email and computer system was breached and the person who was … scamming had basically turned around and intercepted any kind of emails and was watching the business activities of that particular company.”

With Good Shepherd getting ready to host its annual Thanksgiving Day dinner on Oct. 9, McPhee said the event will proceed as planned, and the organization’s ability to assist the community has not been impacted.

“We were able to recover the loss through our insurance,” McPhee said.

“It really does cause us to make sure that any kind of transaction that we’re doing, particularly if it’s a large amount, there is not only the paper trail and the the paper information, but in fact that a telephone call is sent to the vendor that the money would be coming in, that [we know] the bill was legitimate.”

McPhee said it was not a case where Good Shepherd was targeted by the scammer.

“I’m aware of the fact that other clients of this vendor were targeted too …  so it wasn’t targeted at Good Shepherd. It was targeted mostly at just trying to reap the benefits of the work that the vendor had done,” he said.

With “so much cyber activity” in the world, McPhee is reminding other businesses and organizations to “be diligent and check things, and don’t assume that who you’re communicating with is in fact that person that you trusted or had a relationship with.”

Meanwhile, Peel police are reminding all employers to be vigilant with examining changes to payments, account numbers and confirming the identity of those in charge of receiving those payments.