Minneapolis officials warning of a sophisticated local phishing wave impacting the city's zoning permitting process.
City Planning Director Meg McMahon says cybercriminals are extracting specific project details from public land use agendas to craft highly convincing, personalized emails that mimic official city emails.
She says the way these scams work are not the the way the city collects invoices.
"The city of Minneapolis will never ask for online payments we don't push out invoices in that way we take most of our applications are paid for, you know, with a credit card over the phone," McMahon explains.
Investigators are now looking into whether automated bots are being used to monitor these public databases for new targets.
McMahon says that scammers are using public meeting agendas to target land use applicants with highly detailed fake invoices.
"They craft these emails that include pretty detailed information about the projects the applicants has, will have the names of city officials and attempt to kind of trick them into thinking that these are coming from the city," she adds. "And then they include invoices, fake invoices to pay fake application fees."
She says city has responded by adding payment disclaimers to all of their current forms and says applicants should verify all requests directly with their assigned project planner or by calling 311.
