How scammers took a city of Winnipeg for $430,000 using Bitcoin

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Slashdot reader lowvisioncomputing shares a CBC story about an elaborate burglary discovered “when the chief executive of a rural municipality in southwestern Manitoba [population: 3,300] noticed the series of unusual cash withdrawals from his bank account…” It started with a job offer. a month. Employees could work from home.

They were told that they would receive payments on their credit cards, which they would have to transfer to their bank accounts. They would then withdraw the payments, convert them to bitcoins and send them to another account… The majority of the 18 people hired were young and lived in various communities across the country. the company would find a professional website, with information corresponding to what was provided for in the employment contract.

In early December 2019, cybercriminals sent a phishing email to several people at the municipal office in WestLake-Gladsone, a municipality about 150 kilometers west of Winnipeg on the southwest shore of Lake Manitoba. At least one person clicked on the link, which gave hackers access to the municipality’s computers and bank accounts. But weeks passed and nothing happened, so the municipality did not report the incident to the police. It was only after the money went missing that the municipality discovered the two incidents were connected, said Kate Halashewski, who at the time was deputy chief executive of the Municipality of WestLake-Gladstone.

Court documents indicate that on December 19, 2019, someone logged into the municipality’s bank account and changed the password, along with the personal verification questions. Over the next 17 days, the cyberattackers added the 18 hired “employees” as payees and began systematically making withdrawals, transferring the money to the employees’ credit cards. Dozens of withdrawals were made, totaling $472,377, according to court documents — a considerable amount for a municipality with a total annual budget of $7 million.

These withdrawals were only discovered on January 6, when Halashewski saw 48 bank transfers – each less than $10,000 – going to unknown accounts… After the first transfers and conversions were made, bitcoin was then sent to the private account of the scammers – which cybersecurity experts say are unlikely to be in Canada…

The municipality finally announced that it had lost nearly half a million dollars in a press release dated October 12, 2020… No arrests have been made in connection with the WestLake-Gladstone cyberattack and the RCMP claims she is no longer under active investigation.

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