It seems that journalists aren’t the only people who watch town meetings — scammers do as well.
And the information they collect has apparently been used to send invoices to applicants seeking approval for building projects before the town planning board or the zoning board of appeals.
On Tuesday, Heath Liebman, head of the town’s Information Technology Department, spoke to the East Hampton Town Board about the types of scams that are prevalent here, with suggestions on how to avoid being a target, or, worse, a victim.
“Let’s just talk about one of the impetuses for having you present today,” said Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez. “I guess you would call it the scam where the planning board or the zoning board was sending out invoices to folks, right?”
“I was first alerted by the planning director [Tina Vavilis-LaGarenne],” said Mr. Liebman. “She notified me that someone from the public had contacted her about a scam they received [from someone] saying they were from the Town of East Hampton. Our online presence does put a lot of information out there. So, scammers will take whatever they can from our online presence and gather that information in their first portion of building their plan on how to attack.”
Ms. LaGarenne emailed The Star yesterday that she’d been “directly notified of five notices,” but had “no way of knowing the full amount” that may have gone out. “Each time I was notified of one, it was [forwarded] to our I.T. and the Press Office.”
The planning board posts its meetings, with information such as who will be in attendance and what applications will be discussed. Scammers are then generating fake emails from Planning Department personnel.
An email shared with The Star from “Town of East Hampton Planning Commission,” using the address [email protected], requests the recipient to pay a “town compensation fee.”
“This fee is essential for finalizing the review and approval of your application,” it reads.
Another invoice requested a $650 “application submission fee,” a $900 “zoning review fee,” a $750 “environmental impact assessment fee,” a $1,000 “administrative processing fee,” and a $1,300 “final review and approval fee,” for a total of $4,600.
“These emails are often easily identified,” said Mr. Liebman. “When you open up an email and you see the email address, it may have their name, but if you [run the cursor over] the email address, it will show you the actual name of where the email came from.”
Any email officially from the Town of East Hampton will end with “@ehamptonny.gov.”
In addition, the scammers took a screenshot of the town seal and added it to the invoice. “The invoice looked incredibly unprofessional,” said Mr. Liebman. “A lot of other elements were just missing in a normal invoice.”
The most important one is called “OpenGov,” the town’s official payment portal. Applicants are informed that “Prior to submitting any application to the Building Department, you MUST create an account in the OpenGov Portal,” with a link to instructions.
Payment is done entirely through the portal. “It will not come from anyone internally to send an invoice to the public,” Mr. Liebman said. “The only potential invoice is your tax bill. And even that, you can go to our town site and you can access your town tax directly there. So again, a lot of things were just off about this scammer, but it was something that somebody was following down the rabbit hole.”
There’s phishing, spear-phishing, whaling, and clone phishing. Be cautious when clicking links, said Mr. Liebman, and use strong passwords. Watch out for fake websites, which often have spelling errors and grammatical mistakes.
“Always be skeptical,” he said. “It’s okay! It’s definitely better to be safe than to make an ‘Oops’ and say, ‘Oh, how do I fix this now?’ “
“As Heath says, just slow down, be vigilant,” said Councilman Tom Flight. “Anything coming from the town, you know, verify with the town website or make that telephone call.”
