STATE News:SANTA FE ― The Office of the State Auditor released a Risk Advisory warning of prevalent phishing and spoofing attempts Tuesday to defraud government agencies through employee payroll services.
“Don’t be fooled, fraudsters and thieves are constantly coming up with new scams and they hope by appearing to be official, using a well-known person’s name, they can get you to let your guard down,” State Auditor Brian Colón said. “Be diligent and never give out work or personal financial information when solicited.”
The phishing scam seeks to change direct deposit information of employees to redirect payroll funds to a fraudulent bank or financial institution account. The scam is reported as being carried out through an unsolicited spoofed email account. The spoofed email accounts appear to come from known, high-level state employees asking the recipient to change the direct deposit information for their payroll to a fraudulent account. In some instances the request was processed, based on instruction from the spoofed email, and upon discovering the request was a phishing scam it was too late to reverse resulting in a financial loss to the agency.
The Office of the State Auditor urges any agency or entity to report suspected phishing and spoofing fraud to its office. You may report online: www.saonm.org or call the fraud hotline at: 1-866-OSA-Fraud.
Individuals are strongly encouraged to take proactive measures to identify phishing attempts through the use of spoofed emails. If you are a recipient of an email request to change or update payroll distribution we recommend not sharing or changing bank or financial institution account information via email without validating the request or receiving prior authorization.
Additional details concerning this scam and steps you can take to protect yourself can be found by accessing the Risk Advisory: Don’t Get Spoofed | Payroll Phishing Fraud Alert at www.saonm.org.