TUESDAY, JULY. 30, 2024 — Town of Wilton officials issued an “urgent notice” today, warning residents about scammers issuing fake invoices from Wilton’s Planning and Zoning Department, asking people with real applications in front of the town’s land use boards for thousands of dollars.
Wilton Police know of at least four individuals who have been targets of the scheme so far. The perpetrators have emailed these individuals a letter on what looks like Town of Wilton letterhead asking for payment in order to complete their applications, attaching a fraudulent invoice with the request.
Officials learned of the scheme on Monday afternoon, when a resident with an appeal pending with the Zoning Board of Appeals contacted the building office to question why he’d received an invoice for $6,000 and a letter stating his permit had been approved but he had to pay the invoice to get the permit.
But, Town Administrator Matt Knickerbocker said, that’s not how the town works at all, and it tipped them off to the scheme.
“It was completely made up. The invoice itself was terrible. It was clearly a cut-and-paste job that was done very poorly. The only thing that looked legitimate was they had copied the Town seal and put it at the top of the invoice but it wasn’t a high-resolution image, it was fuzzy,”
But what’s got officials especially alarmed is the extent to which the scammers have done their homework, digging deeper for details that are publicly available on the town’s website.
That includes using the correct name and phone extension of the specific town employee who manages the P&Z application process, making the invoices appear more legitimate.
“It was doing a little bit of research on who does what inside the operation, right? That’s something new, I’ve never seen that before,” Knickerbocker said.
The perpetrators mined detailed information from files on the Town website including names and addresses of applicants, what they were applying for, and, in some cases, who represents them — emailing the letters and invoices to the applicants’ attorneys.
While all of the requests were sent by email, the email addresses used by the scammers did not match the town’s official wiltonct.org domain and were not town email addresses that had been “spoofed” or copied. The invoices asked for funds to be sent to a bank account in Texas via routing information.
Those are all leads police will follow.
“We’ll look at rudimentary things in any of these types of investigations — financial institutions associated with the scheme, internet IP addresses where communications are originating from,” Wilton Deputy Police Chief Robert Cipolla said.
He said these types of investigations take a long time and can be complicated.
“Usually they span jurisdictional boundaries, state boundaries, and sometimes even international nexuses. Sometimes these things lead us to bad actors out of the country. And they’re not uncommon — this is the majority of what we investigate, at least in the town of Wilton,” Cipolla said.
Town officials released an image of one of the phony invoices (see below) and asked anyone who has received one to contact the Wilton Police Department at 203.834.6260.
The alert sent to residents and media reiterated that the Wilton Planning and Zoning Department does not mail invoices for pending applications.
Cipolla urged residents to always be cautious anytime they get an urgent request for money.
“Anything you get electronically, or some telephone call, or text message, anytime there’s a request for money, and then add a sense of urgency… it makes you feel like, ‘Oh, I have to do this and I have to do it quick.’ But anytime money is introduced, take a step back. Nothing needs to be facilitated that quickly. Find for yourself a reliable phone number for the entity that this email or customer service rep on a phone call or text message is purporting to be, and contact them yourselves by doing your own research,” Cipolla cautioned.
Fraud schemes targeting local governments are not unprecedented, but neither Knickerbocker or Cipolla have heard of any similar scams that are so detailed happening in any surrounding municipalities.
Town officials will reach out to neighboring towns to warn them about the phony invoice scam, in case the perpetrators are operating across multiple locations. Knickerbocker said the experience is also making him reconsider what information the town will continue to post online.
“I’m going to be working with the town attorney to find out what we are required to post statutorily, if anything, online in terms of applications,” Knickerbocker said.