Man accused in phishing scam stole almost $700,000 from city of Fort Worth, police say

A man accused of stealing money from the city of Fort Worth through a phishing scam made off with almost $700,000, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The theft was revealed Wednesday in a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former IT manager who alleges he reported the theft and other cybersecurity issues to city officials, but was fired in retaliation.

The lawsuit stated that hackers stole more than $516,000 from city accounts and placed it in offshore accounts.

City officials responded in a statement Thursday that the city “had been the victim of fraud in late 2017 when, due to human error, a vendor payment was redirected to a bad actor.”

Gbenga A. Fadipe, 48, is charged in Tarrant County with theft of property greater than $300,000.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, the theft occurred in this way:

In October 2017, the city’s accounts payable department received a change of account request. The request, actually a scam email, appeared to be from Imperial Construction, which was doing business with the city. The email asked the department to change an electronic deposit from Plains Capital Bank to a Chase Bank account, and included a copy of a check with the new account and routing numbers.

“Fort Worth’s Account Payable department made the change of bank accounts with the belief that Imperial Construction had changed banks, according to the documents received,” Fort Worth Detective D.B. Bell wrote in the affidavit.

Fadipe, according to the affidavit, had access to the new Chase account and withdrew thousands between November 2017 and January 2018 from Chase branches in Houston, the detective wrote.

William Birchett alleges he was fired in February in retaliation for reporting to officials that the city’s cybersecurity had been severely compromised, including that the city had lied about its compliance with FBI crime database regulations, and had left city employees’ medical and personal information accessible to anyone with internet access.

The lawsuit, filed in Dallas County District Court, describes Birchett reporting his findings and a proposal to fix the problems to Kevin Gunn, the city’s acting chief financial officer, and Roger Wright, its acting chief technology officer.

Birchett, who worked for the city for 17 months, is seeking more than $1 million.

This story was originally published May 17, 2019 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Man accused in phishing scam stole almost $700,000 from city of Fort Worth, police say."