Brisbane City Council hopes to recover $450,000 lost to scammers

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk has tapped the services of consulting firm Deloitte to probe the $450,000 that the Brisbane City Council had lost to scammers.

According to Quirk, Deloitte would take at least a month to complete the independent investigation over the payments made by the Brisbane City Council to fake invoices set up by fraudsters.

"I've called in Deloitte to get them to do an investigation. I'll be making the results of that investigation public,” he said.

Aside from Deloitte, the Queensland Audit Office, the Queensland Police Service and the Corruption and Crime Commission have been tapped to cooperate in the probe.

"Scammers are fraudsters and they have their own sophisticated system,” Quirk pointed out. "I'm hoping obviously that we get money back for ratepayers but just knowing the way these scammers work, I'm not holding out a lot of hope."

Quirk described the scam as a “sophisticated and targeted” assault to the Brisbane City Council but the government remained optimistic that the money will be recovered.

The scammers contacted the Council through phone calls and legitimate-looking email addresses about the change in account details.

"It was discovered ultimately when the service provider contacted council and said 'well, you're normally a good payer – where's our payment?'" he said.

At the time of discovery Friday, $450,904.76 has been wired to the fraudulent account over nine payments made since July 13.

"They were payments that should've gone to a professional services provider but have gone to a scam account which was set up through a process which the scammers used," Quirk explained.

The mayor, however, clarified that the legitimate service provider will be paid its due despite the incident.

"They are aware of it and they are in the process of being paid now," he said without naming the contractor.

"This only came to our attention on Friday, so we're not going to withhold payment to them. They're entitled to those monies and we will make that payment promptly."