RALEIGH – State officials have successfully recovered $35,000 stolen earlier this week when a financial employee at the N.C. Global TransPark fell victim to a wire fraud scam.
Officials with the State Bureau of Investigation, the N.C. Department of Transportation and N.C. Department of Information Technology recovered the stolen money and it was put back into a state bank account late Thursday.
“The Department of Transportation is constantly working to safeguard taxpayer dollars and work against scam artists,” said David Howard, chief deputy secretary for the N.C. Department of Transportation. “We appreciate the quick action of the SBI and our other state partners to recover these funds.”
The sophisticated scam was carried out by fraudsters who compromise email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfer of funds.
The Global TransPark is a division of the N.C. Department of Transportation. NCDOT is conducting an internal review of the incident and alerted employees to be vigilant against email scams.
The State Bureau of Investigation, the N.C. Department of Information Technology and their federal partners are continuing to investigate the cyber crime.