North Battleford business victim of email transfer scam

A business in North Battleford got scammed out of more than $1 million in an email fraud similar to what happened to the City of Saskatoon.

Stuart Busse is the lawyer for Spence Equipment Rentals. He says the company has given him authorization to speak out, because it wants to warn other businesses about the scam.

“My client was initially concerned it would be embarrassing for them, but they finally came to the conclusion that they really should let people know this is happening, and this could happen to you very quickly and very easily,” said Busse.

Busse told 650 CKOM that Spence deals in heavy-duty, expensive equipment that it rents out to people in the construction industry. Sometimes the company needs to replace equipment, and this time it made a deal with a Caterpillar dealership in the U.S. to purchase some.

“They received an email from the Caterpillar company advising where to transfer the money to, and then a few short minutes later, they got a second email telling them to send the money to a different location,” Busse said.

Busse said the company saw the second fraudulent email before it saw the legitimate one, and transferred $1.4 million US to a scammer’s bank account.

“It was later, a few minutes, maybe an hour later that they discovered the first email and then of course, panic sets in,” Busse said.

The company then contacted police and began the process of trying to get its money back.

Busse said Spence has managed to recover $1.03 million but the company is still out $350,000 US. He says it knows it’ll likely never see that money again.

He also said maybe it’s time to rethink how people move money around so easily now.

“You kind of get complacent on how you send money around the countryside, and you think it’s fine,” Busse said. “Certainly (officials at Spence) have changed their protocols. They’re not going to do that anymore.”