North Gwinnett News

Local and state law enforcement officials are now probing a phishing scam that a cybersecurity expert estimates has cost the Floyd County taxpayers in the neighborhood of $200,000.

Floyd County School Board cybersecurity expert Kyle Koza told Fox5Atlanta.com that school officials mistakenly wired nearly $200,000 to what they thought was a contractor they’d worked with previously. School officials are now working with their insurance to try and recover the money.

"Phishing attacks are probably one of the most common forms of cybersecurity attack,” Koza added. “Usually, it’s an email that comes in that’s asking you for information."

Koza explained that scammers use those emails to pretend as if they're legitimate contacts with the aim of stealing money or personal information.

"The majority of it is for money,” he added. “They’re trying to steal money from you. In this case, it was a lot of money."

According to the Floyd County Police Department, the email school officials received came in the form of a fake invoice in the amount of $194,672.76 for a business called Ben Hill Roofing, which had previously completed work on Armuchee High School.

"Paying false invoices is relatively infrequent in my experience, but it does happen," Koza stated.

District officials added the scam invoice was paid on April 29, and school officials uncovered the error a few weeks later after the real Ben Hill Roofing submitted the company’s invoice for payment on June 7.

"What probably happened was they got an invoice they didn’t realize was from a spoofed email or an email that looked similar to the vendor that they’re working with and then they went ahead and paid the invoice not knowing that it was falsified," Koza explained.

The Floyd County Board of Education later released a statement asserting, "We are working with local law enforcement, GEMA, GBI and insurance officials to recover the funds.”