€36,000 stolen from County Council in phishing scam
A ‘phishing’ scam saw thieves steal €36,000 from Galway County Council, a new audit has revealed.
In a presentation of the findings of the 2017 audit of the local authority books, committee chairperson Des Mahon told last week’s Galway County Council meeting that all but €3,500 of the stolen money had been recovered and the outstanding amount was still being pursued by Gardaí.
Oughterard Independent Councillor Tom Welby queried whether the auditors were satisfied that sufficient safeguards were in place to ensure a similar scam would not happen again.
Mr Mahon said the ‘phishing’ fraudsters had secured a “very significant figure in another council”.
“Lessons were learned. Hopefully it will never happen again. Cyber fraud is a totally different game to what it was.”
International criminals attempted to defraud Meath County Council of €4.3m in late 2016 by impersonating the CEO. The council’s bank was alerted and the theft was detected before it was completed. The funds were frozen in a Hong Kong bank account and that local authority had to initiate legal proceedings to have them returned.
The audit showed there was €5.4 million due from rates by the end of 2017 – which was a significant improvement compared to four years earlier when the debtors amounted to €10.6m.
This was due to an increase in vacant premises and write-offs.
More tenants were falling into arrears with the audit highlighting the €813,000 still outstanding for housing rents - €73,000 more than the year before.
And the arrears extend beyond rents.
“It is a concern that 55% of the housing loan accounts are in arrears for periods greater than three months. The Council apply the mortgage arrears resolution process but in some instances the loans are deemed unsustainable which could lead to repossessions.”
The Council were owed €6m from Government departments - €2.4m of it from Fáilte Ireland.
An agreement had yet to be reached with Galway City Council over the arrears due for shared services for the last seven years.
Council CEO Kevin Kelly said a recent review had modified the proportion of costs slightly in favour of the City Council and they had struck a deal on what each would have to pay until 2021.
The cost of shared services was €6.9m last year.
“We don’t have the agreed figure for arrears. For example we thought it was €95,000 in 2016, €154,000 in 2017 so it’s varying amounts but we have to get agreement with the city on the exact amount.”
Fianna Fáil Councillor Donagh Killilea asked if the audit had investigated the cost of changing the van fleet consisting of up to 20 vans which were to serve as tippers on road works.
He understood that the Council had leased 3.5 tonne vans which had to be replaced with 7.5 tonne vans as they could only carry 400 kilos.
The vans were “not fit for purpose as they cannot carry as much as a bag of sand”.
Mr Kelly said he would investigate the matter further as he too was “in the same game of trying to get value for money”.