Disney‘s governmental agency was swindled for nearly $722,000 in an email phishing scheme last year and the FBI is now taking over the investigation.
According to a sheriff’s report, the Orange Couty Sheriff’s Office referred this case to the FBI instead. Although this update was written in a report last month, the news was only released on July 11th, 2019.
This email phishing scheme began with an employee at the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Reedy Creek is the Disney-run government created by the state of Florida in 1967. This particular employee believed she was receiving emails from an approved landscaping vendor. She paid nearly $722,000 to this vendor.
Luckily, Reed Creek was able to recover nearly all of the money except for about $94,000. This information was released in a 2018 sheriff’s report.
The district has still not been able to recoup the nearly $94,000 according to John Classe. The loss was below Reedy Creek’s insurance deductible, therefore, no claim was submitted.
The sheriff’s office was told that this particular scheme was “purportedly linked to a larger nationwide investigation being conducted by multiple local and federal law enforcement agencies.”
Two men from Louisiana were arrested last year in connection with the phishing scheme case.
One of the men, Patrick Babila, is being held in the Caddo Correction Center on multiple charges such as three counts of illegal transmission of monetary funds.
The other man, Thadius Pugh, was bonded out of jail. There is no other update of him as of Thursday, July 11th.
Source: Orlando Sentinel.
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