SOMETIMES IT IS JUST THE QUALITY OF THE SCAM

It is a terrible thing when you realize you have been scammed. If you have, at some point been the victim of an IRS or FBI (not) phone call, a “letter” from Social Security or an email from some dear friend of yours who reaches out to you in dire straits and who turns out to be some well-organized entity from Namibia, you know the feeling of being violated and the crippling embarrassment at being duped so easily. Oh, and by the way, you are far from being alone in that experience! There has been quite a bit of coverage on the scam that cost Galveston County a little over half a million dollars and County Judge Mark Henry’s statement that certain heads should roll. As a victim of a fairly sophisticated scam that hit my pocketbook pretty soundly, I was immediately curious as to how this scam went down and where blame, if any, should fall. So, I reached out to Judge Lonnie Cox, a member of the County Auditor Board, who was kind enough to take time out of his day to clarify what took place once this scam had been uncovered. Here is what I learned. Lucas Construction was owed $523,000, for work completed for the county. At a point during the billing of the fee, a “middle man scam” was perpetrated on both Lucas construction and Galveston County. This middle man was able to insinuate itself into the transaction by hacking into Lucas Construction to gain access to the invoice and then, by making a minor change to the email address of Lucan Construction, contacted Galveston County with an email containing instructions on payment procedure for the $523,000 that sent it to an offshore account and them to another account also outside the country, bypassing Lucas Construction altogether. The email looks perfectly legitimate and passed from treasury to purchasing and on to payables without the tiny change in the email address being noticed and the invoice was paid following the instructions contained in that “middleman “email. Once discovered, a panel, including purchasing manager, auditor, treasurer the IT director and a representative from the Sheriff’s Department prepared a report explaining what had happened and absolving any one entity with responsibility for the occurrence. It was presented to three district judges, one county judge and one commissioner for their approval. Dawson Forensics Group was also called in to provide an independent analysis and report of what occurred. The report was through and quite lengthy and essentially mirrored the finding of the in-house group. Currently both the FBI and local law enforcement is looking into the issue though no perpetrators have been found at this time. It should be noted that both Rufus Crowder, the Purchasing Agent in question and Galveston County Auditor Randall Rice were both approved by county and district judges just a few months back. It should also be noted that County Judge Henry was not present when four other judges voted their approval of Rufus Crowder only two months ago. All that being said, there seems to be a penchant for naming a fall guy when something like this occurs. Yes, it is disturbing that taxpayers will have to absorb this unfortunate cost. Yes, it is extremely important that the procedures that allowed this to occur be examined and improved upon. And yes, technology is a beast that in the wrong hands can do incredible damage. Therefore, considerable checks and balances should be instituted and monitored and upgraded constantly. Oh, and yes, it is quite possible that something like this will happen again. Accountability is vital to the inner workings of any business, organization or government entity. However, there is a process that works side by side with accountability to ensure that when things go awry, all the factors in play are considered. Far too often the easiest path, and sadly the most satisfying, is to pound our fists, point fingers and loudly claim our outrage. Equally as often, this does little to resolve the issue and serves as a distraction from the important work of solving the problem and taking the necessary steps to avoid it happening again. Worse yet, valuable expertise, insight and experience walks out the door with those who are blamed and allowed to take full responsibility for a perfect storm scenario. One last thing. Did you notice, by any chance, as you were reading this that Lucas Construction was spelled with an “n” at one point? Perhaps the process is the culprit here. That and the knowledge that keeping up with technology is a never-ending and largely unattainable goal. Certainly, I do not know all the factors at play here nor do I pretend to understand the inner workings of county government and the huge responsibilities that our civil servants undertake each and every day. I suppose I am thinking back to a time when things did not move quite so rapidly and conclusion jumping was not the order of the day. Ann Richards once said, “I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back. The here and now is all we have, and if we play it right it’s all we’ll need.” It is important to check the ground we stand on before we start throwing rocks. We might just be left standing on thin air.