By now several scenarios are developing toward explaining how a $1.3 million in payments from the Brownsville Public Utility Board to Noble Texas Builders was diverted to an account in another bank and apparently disappeared.
One is that the PUB was victim of phishing, that is that a cyberthief somehow was able to acquire the bank's, PUB's, and/or Noble Builder's bank numbers or passwords and trick PUB or Noble to make the transfers to a Bank of America account instead of to the construction firm's Lone Star National Bank account.
In Scenario 1, it would mean that both banks, PUB and Noble Builders' firewalls and defenses had been breached and that the phishing thieves could strike at will in the future with other accounts.
Scenario 2 is somewhat more sanguine.
In this one, it entails someone inside Noble Builders and a confederate at the PUB. The conspirator at Noble would send his confederate at PUB accounts payable or administration a simple email from Noble saying they had switched bank accounts and instead of sending payments to Lone Star to send it to a Bank of America account.
The accomplice at PUB would then make the changes and the payments to the firm would be directed to the new Bank of America account, wire the amount to an offshore account and the money would be gone.
Or, there is still another possible scenario. The payments to Noble were made by PUB. Someone at Noble transferred the cash to Bank of America, and the money is again wired out of the country.
In scenario one and three PUB is off the hook. But it's scenario 2 that seems the most likely possibility, according to some seasoned investigators. Therein lies the rob.
They say that a more mundane possibility is that someone either at Noble or PUB knew that large payments would be made to the construction firm and conspired to divert the funds to the other account.
Noble won the bid to construct the new PUB Administrative Annex Building, designed by ERO Architects. The new building is located adjacent to the existing Brownsville PUB Administration Building at Robinhood Drive and is the largest part of a $16.8 million building project started in January 2019.
The blue-ribbon cutting was to be held March 23, but was suspended due to the COVID-19 restrictions on large crowds and social distancing.
A former PUB board member said that regardless of where the fault lies and which scenario is the most likely, the PUB rate payers should not foot the bill for the heist.
"The people - especially the residential customers - should not foot the bill for this," he said. "This sounds more like an inside job than a cybercrime. We shouldn't have to pay for this. The administration should be held accountable for the apparent lack of safeguards in place for the handling of payments. Where are the security oversights that are supposed to be in place to prevent things like this?"
16 comments:
Now that all the cantinas are closed where you hangin' round at?
So, so go on senior citizens, go out, gather in large groups. Go out, mingle, shake hands, kiss people if you want to because hey, you’re old, you’re going to die anyway, probably. Right Don, is that what you’re thinking there? And then this happened last Friday evening. Then on Monday, Don Young’s office actually announced that they’re all going to be working from home for now on for the foreseeable future.
Republican Lawmaker Tells At-Risk Elderly Americans To Keep Going Out During Pandemic
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (A REPUBLCIAN) suggests the elderly should risk their lives to save the economy
If I see an elderly risking their lives they must be repblican?
The bill says that taxpayers relying on Social Security as part of retirement or through the Social Security Disability Insurance program can have their Social Security Administration data used directly; beneficiaries of Supplemental Security Income, which often benefits old or disabled people in poverty, are not included in the current version.
Can somebody interpet the above?
I smell RAT'S
Both Noble and PUB are corrupt. Take it from there.
Juan, As usual your quest for a juicy, name smearing scheme once again leads to the dissemination of half truths and downright lies. These phishing hacks have been going on for the last 4 or 5 years and are mainly aimed at government entities and private sector contractors engaged in large construction projects. Due to the public nature of the construction projects and attendant publicity (bond elections, public bids, open meeting approval of the contractor, etc.) hackers know what's going on and aim for the big scores. The bad guys hack email traffic and bank accounts on a daily basis and do so from places like Pakistan, Slovenia and other countries where there is little to no oversight of the virtual world. None of your scenarios is remotely close to what actually happened. This is strictly a third party heist with no involvement of PUB or Noble. To put it in a way that even you can understand, the bad guys held up the stagecoach that was taking the gold from the company to pay the miners. Neither the company or the miners had anything to do with the robbery.
Urban Dictionary has coined the perfect term for toilet paper hoarders, spring breakers and others who fail to practice proper preventative measures amid the coronavirus pandemic: COVIDIOT.
That Ive been here 100 years needs to go NOW
GOOD TRY, March 24, 2020 at 5:15 PM History SPEAKS FOR ITSELF buddy!
That's a new one, go tell it to the DA, here nobody gives a shit. fairy tale gringo...
Allegedly the same thing, money disappearing, was happening at Brownsville ISD some years back; the only difference is the one million dollars would allegedly be hacked by a bad guy, one million dollars, every month??? The FBI investigation was stalled, allegedly, by a Senator?? Me huele a SUCIO????
@March 24, 2020 at 5:15 PM
He he say come and investigate NNNNOOOOOOO he didn't say that WHY? Where's the FBI this is a juicey one many feathers on their hats...
Florida's going WHAT, more?? they need to built more barracks.
Are those terroistic threats? Where's the FBI on this one...
Did Noble do the $400,000 renovation of the restroom at the PUB central office? Es un robo ante tus propios ojos!
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