Babylon reports phishing scam targeting building applications

A phishing scam that has already hit the East End has now spread west to Babylon Town, where officials are warning businesses and residents to be on alert.

The attempted rip-off targets businesses and residents seeking permission from the town for rezonings, variances or other property-related issues, said Andrew Baranowski, Babylon’s director of information technology and security.

Bad actors are scrubbing municipality websites, possibly using artificial intelligence, for the minutes and agendas of public meetings where applicants are seeking approvals. They then look for public email addresses of those individuals and send them emails using the Town of Babylon seal, claiming to be the commissioner of the town’s planning and development department, Denise Graziano. The emails come from fake addresses such as tobplanning@gmail.com, Baranowski said.

The emails include invoices for thousands of dollars in town fees and instructions on how to wire the money, he said.

"They’re trying to make it look like a legit invoice," he said. "They’re looking for people and this is the easiest way to get money."

A similar scam was detected in the towns of Southampton, Riverhead and Shelter Island this summer, along with the Village of Southampton.

Henry Kreymborg, Riverhead Town’s head of IT and networks and systems coordinator, said the town is aware of three emails that were sent. In one case, the potential victim was at the bank about to send the requested money and was stopped by a bank employee who became suspicious. The town was then alerted, Kreymborg said.

"They put together a well-formatted invoice, with all of the line items that somebody might expect if they were going through with that project," he said of the scammers. "It’s not an amateur operation."

The New York Department of State last year sent out a warning to municipalities that they were seeing a rise in reports of fraudulent activity involving land use review. The memo notes municipalities are required under the state’s Open Meetings Law to upload all applications and project files that go before planning and zoning boards and that such applications often include information such as names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.

Kreymborg alerted Newsday to another memo, this one from the FBI issued in March, warning about the scheme and noting "Victims of this scam have been identified nationwide."

Baranowski said the town became aware they were the latest target after an unsuspecting business owner came in to pay the fraudulent fee in person, saying his business didn’t do bank wire transfers. Town officials then received a forwarded phishing email from someone else asking about the invoice. Those are the only two instances of attempted swindling the town has uncovered so far, Baranowski said.

Southampton Village Administrator Scott Russell said the phony invoices were widespread in the community about six months ago and appeared legitimate.

"They’re identifying the owners, the addresses and the work that’s getting done," Russell said. "So if you’re a homeowner it seems like it’s credible ... frankly as a homeowner it’s something that I might have fell for."

He said a few recipients ended up wiring money to the scammers.

"Unfortunately, some people got stung and there’s no way we can recover their losses for them, that’s something they would have to work out with their banks," Russell said.

The scam invoices are coming from Gmail accounts and the town has notified Google about it, Baranowski said. Newsday reached out to Google but did not receive an immediate response. Kreymborg said the emails in Riverhead came from addresses ending in @USA.com.

Babylon and other towns impacted have posted alerts about the phishing scheme on their homepages. Baranowski advised residents and business owners to carefully examine any correspondence that purports to come from the town and ensure it’s from an official townofbabylonny.gov email address. Further, the town uses OpenGov.com software for permit applications and processes payments through a secure credit card portal, he said.

Kreymborg said he has advised the town’s planning and zoning boards to alert all applicants about the scam.

Southampton Village officials notified their police department and alerted residents, as well as the architects, engineers and other representatives that property owners frequently use in the village, Russell said. Still, he added, it's a difficult scam to combat.

"The problem is that the requirement of government is to disclose as much information to the public as possible, and the idea there is to protect the public," Russell said. "Then you have people who come along and figure out how to exploit the public, and that’s where the shame is."