Although it’s been six months since the city of Ocala was scammed out of nearly $500,000 in a cyber fraud incident, new details continue to emerge.
The “Ocala Gazette” has reviewed public documents and conducted interviews (see sidebar for details) to tell a fuller story of what happened and who was involved. New details include the following:
- For the first time, we publicly identify those accused of failing to take actions that could have thwarted the scam.
- The fraudulent Electronic Fund Transfer form that was used to divert the money was doctored in such a way there were clues something wasn’t right, including the city’s name being misspelled in the logo at the top of the EFT.
- Former Fiscal Operations Manager Anthony Webber, accused of misleading his colleagues and superiors and failing to cancel the transaction when he had the opportunity to do so, delivered a hand-written note announcing his retirement one day after the first public acknowledgement something was amiss. Webber could not be reached for comment.
- Webber received a stellar performance review just four months before the incident unfolded.
- City employees tried to make the affected vendor, Traffic Control Devices, wait until the money was returned before it got paid, forcing the company to finance the job.
- When the city changed course and released the money a second time, the payment originally went to the wrong account again.
- Former Director of Procurement and Contracting Daphne Robinson has rejected the internal city auditor’s suggestion that she was aware fraud had occurred.
- TCD officials dispute the suggestion the fraud began inside their system.
A quick recap…