Noosa Council loses $2 million in an international fraud incident

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A south-east Queensland council has lost almost two-million-dollars in an international fraud incident. The council admits it fell victim to the fraud and has since recovered some of the money, but it is reluctant to share the details of what actually happened.

Transcript

00:00Well this morning we have heard from the Noosa Mayor and the Council CEO about this concerning

00:07incident which actually took place in December last year but there has been an ongoing investigation

00:13since then. We know that Queensland Police, the Australian Federal Police and even Interpol

00:18have been involved in investigating this fraud. A total of $2.3 million was taken from Council

00:24but it's since been able to recoup about $400,000 so the total loss still stands at $1.9 million

00:31which is a significant sum. The Council wouldn't specify exactly how the fraud took place except

00:38to say that the fraudsters used sophisticated AI social engineering techniques to extract

00:44the money. As a result the Council has had to tighten its security. It's insisting that there

00:49has been no details of members of the public, rate payers that have been leaked. It's not

00:54a cyber hack, more a cyber fraud. Here's a little bit of what the Mayor had to say this

00:58morning. Well I personally feel stung but very determined and focused on ensuring that we

01:07minimise the likelihood that this ever happens again. So that's been the focus ever since

01:11it has happened. Ensuring the CEO and the executive team have the resources and the support to do

01:16what is necessary to put in place all those measures to ensure that that operational vulnerability

01:22is never exploited again. Council handed down its budget in June. There was a 6.7% rate rise

01:29but it insists that that has nothing to do with this incident. It also says that it has had to spend

01:34extra money on updating its security measures for staff and also adding extra staff on and it's also

01:41serving as a warning basically to other councils and other organisations really to be alert for these

01:47kind of AI fraud attempts and make sure that their technology is moving at the same pace as a lot of

01:53this AI technology is moving which we know is a very rapid pace. So it's an ongoing and emerging threat

01:59to many organisations out there.

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