Expert says Saskatoon would have good chance to recover $1M lost in scam if it's still in Canada

An expert in fighting financial crime says the City of Saskatoon would havea good chance of recovering more than $1 million it sent to a fraudster if the cash remains in Canada.

On Thursday, officials announced the city had been duped by someone impersonatingthe CFO of a construction company. The person requested the company's banking info be changed. When the city went to pay the company, the money was sent to the fraudster instead.

Don Perron is the managing director with Froese Forensic Partners in Toronto and is a former financial crime investigator with the Ontario Provincial Police. He says there is still a possibility the cash can be recovered.

"If the money is still within Canada, there are great potential and possibilities of identifying, locating the money and seizing the money," he said. "If the money was shipped offshore or is in other countries, then it becomes more challenging, more difficult."

Saskatoon's City Manager Jeff Jorgenson wasn't available for comment on Friday, but at the announcement he said the City of Saskatoon is following every possible lead in hopes of getting the money back.

The Saskatoon Police Service is investigating the fraud, but said it was unable to disclose much about the investigation. Police spokesperson Alyson Edwardssaid the service is investigating possible links between this fraud and others executed against municipalities in Canada.

Edwards said the investigator assigned to the file would seek out support from other agencies and jurisdictions if connections are identified.

Saskatoon's internal auditor has also been called into investigate controls around the city's finances.

Todd MacKay, prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said these types of crimes are always upsetting, but that the City of Saskatoon is taking the proper approach.

"An awful lot of folks in Saskatoon worked really hard to pay those taxes, so to see that money sprout legs and walk away, man, that's that's really frustrating," he said.

"The key thing is for the city to do what it's doing in terms of working with the banks, working with the police, track down the people responsible, do their very best to get the money back and hold people responsible."

He said the next step for the city is to look ahead to determine how they can prevent this type of fraud from happening again. Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark said on Thursday staff are already reviewing the city's security controls.

The Saskatchewan Construction Association is also set to brief members on the incident as the construction season wraps up and discuss potential ways to protect customers from these types of threats.

John Lax, the association's communications director, said it's "very early" to determine what those solutions might be.

"It's very easy to envision that pin codes or passwords or other basic mechanisms in place would prevent this sort of thing from happening, or at least support prevention as we move forward," he said.

Other instances of fraud in Canada:

• Ottawa city treasurer tricked into wiring $100K US to fraudster
• City of Burlington falls for $503,000 phishing scheme
• Hackers demand bitcoin ransom in cyberattack on big Canadian restaurants
• MacEwan University defrauded of $11.8M in online phishing scam