‘Bizarre’ emails led to fraud adding up to nearly $500,000 in RM of Edenwold: Judge

A Court of King’s Bench judge called the email communications that scammed the RM of Edenwold out of nearly half a million dollars this summer “bizarre.”

The RM and White City were scammed through their jointly owned wastewater authority – the RM lost $497,613.28, while White City said it lost $200,000.

Read more:

• White City and RM Edenwold defrauded of nearly $700,000: RCMP
• White City says it has recovered almost $200,000 lost to fraud this summer
• Scams and digital fraud on the rise in Saskatchewan

Last month, White City said it got about $195,000 back through insurance, while the RM announced it had recovered $377,376.03 from the relevant financial institutions.

The RM was in court seeking an order for the Bank of Montreal, which had the funds in transit, to return the money.

The decision, from Justice Andrew Davis, explained that the RM got an email asking for an e-transfer from a WCRM Wastewater Management Authority account. The account had been hacked, and the request came from a fraudster. The city and RM had originally only said the authority was “electronically impersonated.”

Davis said the RM’s actions in actually making the transfer were “somewhat surprising,” saying the email communications were a departure from previous practice and were “somewhat bizarre in themselves.”

The court decision described the emails as using poor English grammar, unlike previous written communication from WCRM, and noted that they had an out-of-context level of urgency. Both of those are red flags warned about by police and anti-fraud educators.

In a relatively short decision, Davis ordered the bank to return the funds. He noted the court has dealt with similar situations in recent years, pointing to a case in 2023 where Creative Saskatchewan was scammed out of more than $330,000. That organization was granted a similar order in its efforts to get back some of the money.

“The ease with which moneys may be transferred electronically and the sophistication of fraudulent actors suggests schemes like the one here may only grow more prevalent,” Davis wrote in the decision.

Meanwhile, the RCMP has been investigating the fraud involving both the RM and White City.

On its social media pages after the court decision, the RM called the incident isolated and targeted, saying there was no breach of internal municipal systems and no personal information of ratepayers was compromised.

It also wrote that it’s strengthening controls and procedures, and that employees were undergoing training to improve their ability to identify and prevent potential fraud.