Thousands of taxpayer dollars would have been lost if the Oklahoma County government did not catch a recent fraud attempt to purchase drones from an outside vendor.County Commissioner Brian Maughan said they’ve dealt with fraud cases in the past, but nothing to this caliber. He said it would have cost the county thousands of taxpayer dollars if it hadn’t been caught.”Some really mischievous people trying to be just out and out childish or they’re actually or really trying to do some frauding where they’re trying to take away taxpayer money for something that wasn’t needed for public purpose,” Maughan said.The culprit committed fraud against a drone company and the Oklahoma County commissioners by using a fake website impersonating the Oklahoma County office to order drones using a very similar website domain but using .net instead of .org.”It’s kind of like the old prank of ordering up a bunch of pizzas and having it sent to someone’s house and they’re just stuck with it and of course, the pizza company wants payment just trying to flush that out,” Maughan said.Now, the Oklahoma County commissioners are taking the fraud case to court. As a result of the fraud attempt, they’ve started receiving packages right outside their office doors.”You know you start hunting around were a fairly large entity here and try to make sure now who is it that signed for and who is it that actually requested this, which department, cause we don’t know why we have this,” Maughan said.The next steps to clear up the process is working with the vendor to make sure they’ve received their merchandise back and moving forward with the litigation. They said this is happening more and more to vendors and organizations across the country.”It’s disgusting but it’s not unlike what I’m sure a number of other companies are having to deal with and were just trying to make sure as stewards of the taxpayer money that we don’t allow any kind of fraud to go on in this way to easily cyphen out county dollars this has to be stopped and we have to seek out the root cause,” Maughan said.
Thousands of taxpayer dollars would have been lost if the Oklahoma County government did not catch a recent fraud attempt to purchase drones from an outside vendor.
County Commissioner Brian Maughan said they’ve dealt with fraud cases in the past, but nothing to this caliber. He said it would have cost the county thousands of taxpayer dollars if it hadn’t been caught.
“Some really mischievous people trying to be just out and out childish or they’re actually or really trying to do some frauding where they’re trying to take away taxpayer money for something that wasn’t needed for public purpose,” Maughan said.
The culprit committed fraud against a drone company and the Oklahoma County commissioners by using a fake website impersonating the Oklahoma County office to order drones using a very similar website domain but using .net instead of .org.
“It’s kind of like the old prank of ordering up a bunch of pizzas and having it sent to someone’s house and they’re just stuck with it and of course, the pizza company wants payment just trying to flush that out,” Maughan said.
Now, the Oklahoma County commissioners are taking the fraud case to court. As a result of the fraud attempt, they’ve started receiving packages right outside their office doors.
“You know you start hunting around were a fairly large entity here and try to make sure now who is it that signed for and who is it that actually requested this, which department, cause we don’t know why we have this,” Maughan said.
The next steps to clear up the process is working with the vendor to make sure they’ve received their merchandise back and moving forward with the litigation. They said this is happening more and more to vendors and organizations across the country.
“It’s disgusting but it’s not unlike what I’m sure a number of other companies are having to deal with and were just trying to make sure as stewards of the taxpayer money that we don’t allow any kind of fraud to go on in this way to easily cyphen out county dollars this has to be stopped and we have to seek out the root cause,” Maughan said.
https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-county-government-fraud-attempt-purchase-drones/41196382