Theft of County Funds

Yesterday, I was notified by County Board Chairman Rick Gundrum that there was a theft of County Funds.  This afternoon, County Administrator Josh Schumann sent out a press release, which has been reposted on Washington County Insider at this link: http://washingtoncountyinsider.com/2016/07/washington-county-victim-of-wire-transfer-fraud/

This incident is still being investigated, so the information I have is heavily limited until that investigation is concluded.  I basically don't know any more than what is in the press release.

I want to apologize to everyone in Washington County that this happened.  Anytime something like this happens, an apology is due, no matter what precautions were in place.  I can imagine that each of the other 25 County Board Supervisors was just as surprised and dismayed as I was at this news.

I am gravely disappointed that something like this occurred, and that our county government failed to prevent it from occurring.  While many precautions were taken, they simply were not enough in this instance.  Rest assured, changes will be made to reduce the likelihood that this will occur again.

When I was first elected 3 months ago, I sought to be an advocate for responsible government.  That hasn’t changed, and in this case that means ensuring that additional precautions are taken.  While the county will never achieve perfect security to protect our financial resources in this digital age, we need to take the most reasonable and prudent steps possible.

I have submitted a request to the County Administrator, specifically requesting that our digital security be audited by an outside firm on at least an annual basis.  This will help to reduce the likelihood of a recurrence of an incident like this.  I will also be encouraging the County Board Supervisors who are on the Administrative Committee, as they oversee our Finance Department and I.T. Department, to make sure the funding is in place for these audits.  I also know that Josh and he County’s financial team are working to put other safeguards in place to further reduce the likelihood of another theft of this nature.

I also want to look at the positives from this incident, including:

1. This could have been much worse than it was. I say that not to minimize what happened, but to recognize that there was the potential for this to have been much larger in scale. We have been a fiscally sound county, with adequate financial reserves. While this theft was significant, it was not anywhere close to being as catastrophic as it could have been.
2. This appears to have been found relatively quickly, within two weeks. Many times, a seemingly isolated incident is a test, to see if the theft will be detected. If the theft is not discovered, the thief will return and begin to escalate the theft levels. One such incident at a previous employer persisted over 4 years. That didn’t happen here, because the incident was discovered so quickly.
3. Our response to this incident was quick. Immediate safeguards have been put in place to prevent these particular hackers from using the same tactics to return and victimize our County Government again.

I apologize again to all of the taxpayers of Washington County for this unfortunate incident, and hope the perpetrators are brought to justice..