The City of Brighton announced the recovery of nearly $350,000 from a potential fraud case.
City officials sent a $348,000 Automated Clearing House — electronic transaction similar to direct deposit — transaction to their bank on Monday to pay a vendor who was awarded a construction project last December.
The following day, the bank notified the city of suspicious activity regarding the transaction, said Brighton’s City Manage Jane Bais DiSessa.
“Immediately upon them calling us we quickly asked them to stop the payment and the bank just really quickly went to work, and (helped) us recover those funds,” Bais DiSessa said.
With the assistance of the Brighton Police Department, the FBI and the city’s insurance company, the city successfully recovered the funds.
“I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate the dedicated work of our staff, and the bank as well for them to go to the nth degree to help us recover those funds,” Bais DiSessa said.
“It was just a lot of due diligence, hard work and willingness to look at the situation and help us recover our funds.”
Due to the ongoing investigation, Bais DiSessa was unable to comment on why the bank found the transaction suspicious.
Despite the city recovering the funds from the transactions, officials are already taking the necessary steps such as ending ACH transactions to vendors and establishing other safeguards to assure this never happens again.
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