Plus tips to help your church avoid financial scams
When Pastor Alan Thompson challenged the congregation at Brown Road Baptist Church in Mesa to pay off the mortgage for their church building, he never expected the roller coaster that would follow.
In less than a year-and-a-half, the congregation raised $313,000 to pay off the church’s mortgage, said Thompson, the senior pastor. But when the time came to fully pay off the debt and wire the final payment of $76,000 to the loan office, the money never reached its intended destination.
The church was a victim of wire fraud — specifically an email account takeover, said Detective Kent Green, the Mesa Police Department detective assigned to the case.
Thankfully, that's not the end of the story.
Not only was Detective Green able to help recover the stolen funds, but he also shared some tips with us to help other churches avoid financial scams. Here's what he had to say:
Slow down and pay attention. Green says to watch for changing instructions, language or other details, especially pertaining to financial transactions. These are red flags. Pastor Alan Thompson said that when they re-evaluated the emails sent by the scammer, they noticed an incorrect email address. Green said a phone number in a loan officer’s signature was also off by one digit.
Involve other people. “When (scammers) implement themselves into communication, they’ll isolate the sender of the financial transaction, and they’ll create a hurry to do this now,” Green says. Instead, get a second or third pair of eyes on the process. Scammers may also try to force a transaction closer to the weekend to buy time and increase the likelihood that the real, intended recipient is not working.
Don’t respond to phone calls from unknown numbers and be cautious about links. Whether in text messages, on social media or in your email, before you click a link, you should pause to make sure you know what it is and who it's from, Green says. Clicking malicious or phishing links can ultimately send you “down the path of allowing remote access to your device or getting hacked in the end,” he adds.
If you are a victim of fraud or a scam, report it immediately at ic3.gov. Change your passwords and set up two-factor authentication.
For more resources about preventing scams, Green recommends checking out idtheftcenter.org and operationshamrock.org.
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