(file photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By CKOM News Staff

FINANCE FRAUD

North Battleford business falls victim to similar email transfer scam as Saskatoon

Aug 21, 2019 | 6:08 PM

A business in North Battleford was scammed out of more than $1 million in an email fraud similar to what happened to the City of Saskatoon.

Stuart Busse is the lawyer for Spence Equipment Rentals. He says the company has given him authorization to speak out, because it wants to warn others about the scam.

“My client was initially concerned it would be embarrassing for them, but they finally came to the conclusion that they really should let people know this is happening, and this could happen to you very quickly and very easily,” Busse said.

Spence rents out heavy-duty equipment to the construction industry. Often, the company needs to replace equipment, and this time, it made a deal with a Caterpillar dealership in the U.S.

“They received an email from the Caterpillar company advising where to transfer the money to, and then a few short minutes later, they got a second email telling them to send the money to a different location,” Busse said.

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Busse said the company saw the second fraudulent email before it saw the legitimate one, and transferred US$1.4 million to the fraudsters bank account.

“It was later, a few minutes, maybe an hour later that they discovered the first email and then of course, panic sets in,” Busse said.

The company contacted police and started the process of trying to get its money back.

Busse said Spence has managed to recover $1.03 million but the company is still out US$350,000. He said the company knows it’ll likely never see that money again.

He said it could be time to rethink how people move money around.

“You kind of get complacent on how you send money around the countryside, and you think it’s fine,” Busse said. “Certainly (officials at Spence) have changed their protocols. They’re not going to do that anymore.”