Taxpayers in Burlington lost more than $500,000 in May when a City employee fell for an email asking the municipality to henceforth send all payments for one of its big suppliers to a new bank. Yep. No one picked up the phone to the payee and asked: “Is this email really from you?” It’s happened before and seems destined to reoccur until employees become wary enough about email requests to confirm their validity. The $500,000 was lost in a single transaction, reports say, suggesting a high level of credibility on the part of the hapless employee.
