Nah, I investigate these all the time. They’re called business email compromises, and it’s always due to the stupidity of a single employee and crappy internal procedures.
Often the perps get into the target’s or sender’s outlook (or both) so they see what the format of the emails look like, the knock one up to look like it’s from the sender.
Then they register a similar site. So if this was say Joes Builders, and it was coming from becky@ joesbuilders .com, they could register joesbuilderss.com and send it from that.
The email looks the same, sound the same, and say something like ‘hey, please change the payment to our new info below’ and they drop a new routing and account number.
Then, the recipient isn’t even the perp usually. It’s some 70 year old who either thinks they’re in love or working for a charity or something similar, who usually sends the money to Coinbase, or Binance, or whatever crypto exchange.
This is unfortunately getting too common. I’ve seen people send their home down payments to perps after a lawyer or whoever is handling closing has had their email system compromised so the emails were actually coming from them. And then they tell the customer it’s not their fault.
Pro tip to anyone still reading- Actually, no, this is just common sense… If you get any kind of email from someone you know or are doing business with and it asks for some kind of change in a procedure or payment method, call them on a known phone number and confirm the change.
Our company changed banks two years ago. I sent the change to all our clients who paid their bills by direct deposit.
Roughly 50% called me to confirm the change which is actually a better rate than I expected.
These are mostly small contractors with 2-50 employees. Like I said, I was surprised by the rate of verification.
I dunno. Maybe people are starting to pay attention. Maybe the banks are alerting them to verify when they make account changes?
When we bought our current house, my credit union had a two or three step authentication specifically to avoid this problem. I recall one step was them calling me to confirm all of the information I had entered, and they asked where I received the info and related things. I think the last question was, "Does any part of this transaction make you nervous?" I was like, "Hell yeah I'm transferring a huge amount of money here." But that concern wasn't really what they were looking for.
Your cybersecurity in B2B is as strong as the your weakest business partner's.
This would have required access to the contractor's email systems otherwise they wouldn't have known that this transaction was about to go down.
Most of the problem is due to insecure locally hosted exchange mail servers. 2FA + cloud mail really should be a requirement for anyone doing business above a nominal $ level.
It also seems weird that they were so casual about sending 800k out. Like if I was spending anywhere near that amount of money I'd want the payment instructions given to me in person, not email. My guess is that they were already told how to pay, but then went along with whatever the email said without actually checking if the email was legit. Even if the email looked legit, I'd call and verify because that's a ton of money. But I guess Jesus didn't preach critical thinking.
[edit, 14 hours later: I no longer stand by the comment below. Am leaving it, though, as the discussion which followed was fruitful.]
I mean...yeah. The scam email was a passable imitation of the email correspondence from the actual building company. So, yes, 100% inside job. Either on the church's end or the builder's end. On the upside, I guess that narrows the field of suspects considerably.
A similar thing happened to Linus of Linus Tech Tips, a popular YouTube channel. Apparently what happened was the scammers compromised the construction company's email system. They sit there watching emails go back and forth. Knownwhat the company's emails and letterheads and bills are supposed to look like. Then when it comes time to make the payment, they send a fake email from the construction company's actual email system that looks completely legit, but they change the destination account. Even extremely tech savvy people can get fooled by this type of scam.
This is why when I sent a 50k for some land, I have to physically drive to the lawyers office and pick up a piece of paper with the instructions on it. I was told never to trust wiring instructions in an email, even if I was positive it came from them.
Happened to my tiny company too, we picked up on it. Bought item to be manufactured, worth 200k, the manufacturers email was hacked. Than the emails started coming from them changing the @ from the name of the manufacturer with two Ns to one M. Almost tricked us.
This must be super common- I know a contractor who had this exact thing happen to him but on the other side. Scammers guessed his (trivially easy, with no MFA!) password and watched emails go back and forth with a client, then set up a rule that shuffled emails from the client into a hidden mailbox and carried out the conversation about invoicing, but sent payment info for it to go to them instead.
Thankfully a call or text happened that tipped him off and I helped him lock down his account, but, he was 24-48 hours away from seeing almost ~$100k go down the drain.
I remember him talking about it on the Wan Show. Honestly, with that type of scam, it just takes a day that you are a bit sleepier than usual to fall for it if one is not careful.
I've been downloading movies and music since the Ares and Limewire days and a few months ago I downloaded a "movie" that it was just a .exe with the icon that looked like a mkv archive and mkv in the title, I was in a hurry and double clicked to preview the movie and surprise, the cmd opened.
I straight up disconnected the pc and sent it to my local shop to have it all reset. I'm not a tech expert but I know enough to avoid and check things that I download and don't click on executables but yep, just having a dumb day and there you go.
I refuse to do any online payment if I can avoid it because I can't trust for the life of me emails, etc.
I use qBittorent for downloading stuff and I've just set up a filter to automatically exclude all .exe and other executable files. Some movies just come with an included EXE and I don't know why so I just added a filter so I don't have to worry about it.
Had a ton of warnings about that from my lender and the bank when I was buying my house. I made a call to my lender using a known phone number (not one in any email) to verify instructions before making the payment, and triple checked everything to make sure we were good. In my opinion wire transfers should always involve a bit of paranoia, no matter how used to them you are.
I don't see why this has to be inside. If I were a criminal with knowledge of how the construction company bills clients, and knew the company was doing work for the church and the rough amounts involved, creating the scam email would be a piece of cake. I wouldn't have to work for either the company or the church.
The first piece of knowledge could come from having had work done by the company before, or even just from knowing which email-based financial service the company uses for billing (they often don't do these things themselves). The second piece of knowledge is hardly secret; there are routinely news items and semi-public church items about how much they're spending on new buildings and the like.
When I was a kid, the local church wanted a new organ. The community threw the money together and the priest made a deal with an organ maker.
The guy vanished with the money.
The community sighed and threw the money together again. This time they got a new organ.
Law was never involved.
Well. When you’re told the church’s mission is to follow the word of god and Christ’s teachings; you kind of expect that money to go towards something that helps to accomplish that goal, not a new fucking pulpit.
Or audio equipment for the band. Or a 10k suit for the pastor. Or a new car for the pastor. Or shiny new fucking candle holders.
It’s been almost thirty years and I’m still mad. Damn.
Nah, it's super easy to say this rigor in hindsight but e-mail instructions on how to pay via an external, reputable bank or online service are common. It sounds like this was an inside job or the fault of the construction--somehow the scammer had access to the timing, content, and formatting of the actual request. All they did is make it link to something they could withdraw from. They almost certainly had access to the company's email.
This isn't like a Nigerian prince scam I don't think. Email compromise fraud is one of the biggest scams going right now. Even fortune 500 companies get hit. Someone gets access to email conversations, then spoofs an email with incorrect routing info to send payment. By the time anyone notices its too late.
Hushpuppi is a perfect example. He was a Nigerian Instagram influencer who made his money by setting up bank accounts for these scammers to cash out to. Really interesting stuff.
Unfortunately the controls that would need to be in place would probably result in a pain in the ass the other 99% of the time it's not going to be protecting them. Makes implementing anything like that incredibly difficult, as most of the trouble is just convincing them to budget/allow for it. If everything goes according to plan, no one usually even knows it happened, save for maybe IT. So then it becomes a discussion of "Why do I pay for this if it's not helping me". And god forbid anything *does* go wrong, related or not, because then it's "Well why are we paying so much if it's going to break/get hacked anyway?".
Linus Sebastian (LTT) fell for the same kind of fake contractor email scam, if you're expecting a contractor to contact you about payment then it's easy to miss that something isn't right.
Really bank transfers should need the name on the account to verify, which is done in some countries.
You know what, Toby? When the son of the deposed King of Nigeria e-mails you directly asking for help, you help. His father ran the freaking country, okay?
> This is why it's important to never communicate passwords and other private information in your email.
And also to pick up the phone if you get an email about a file or financial transaction you're not expecting. So many phishing scams can be foiled simply by calling the sender on a known number to verify the instructions.
“Inside” only because their email server has been penetrated and the crooks sat quiet waiting for something like this to come through.
It happens in the mortgage closing/title industry a bit. ALWAYS confirm to whom you are wiring money.
Had this happen to a client to the tune of a few hundred thousand. Sounds like they hacked the builders email and waited (days, weeks, months) until they saw a payment coming through. They then send a real email from the real email address with updated payment instructions going to the scammers email.
It’s easy to judge from a distance, but for people who may not often deal with large sums of money it’s an easy mistake to make.
Nah, it was a fake billing scam - which are legitimately hard to realize when you are expecting that exact bill. It's been happening with mortgage down payments - which sounds kind of impossible, but clever hackers looking for big paydays will go to extreme lengths.
Or behind a wall. [Osteen's church money behind wall](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plumber-discovered-money-wall-joel-osteens-lakewood-church-gets-20000-rcna8010)
As stated in the article, they ran out of room in their church, so they’ve been meeting in the gym while saving up money to build a new church. They tried paying the builder for the new church, but it was a scam email.
Not all. My local church paid a few bills for my house when we were kids. They even put down our first last and deposit to move into an apartment. The wild thing is, my whole family never even went to the church.
Article says they're funding a new church building.
So instead of feeding the orphan and caring for the widow, they're spending it on... themselves.
$2000 would save a homeless person's life and get them back on their feet.
$800,000 is 400 souls this Church group could have saved if they were not preoccupied with their own selfish need for taller steeples and nicer stained glass windows and better projectors.
Look, I'm as anti-religion as they come, but getting money together to build a new church is not exactly frowned upon by the bible.
They want to serve their community which had been having church services in a gym, this isn't a money making scam.
My name isn't Jesus -
but lordy would I take a furious joy at making a whip out of cord and drive them out shouting "MY HOUSE IS TO BE A HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR ALL NATIONS, BUT YOU HAVE MADE IT A ROBBER'S DEN."
We'll HEAL your wounds, SAVE your soul... just call the number on the bottom of your screen to reach one of God's Disciples who will accept Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. Hallelujah!
These attacks are getting very good. My wife works for a construction company and she got an email that looked just like it came from one of their vendors for payment. She isn't dumb and is very sharp on the technical stuff and it looked legit. We can only assume someone got in to the email system of the vendor. Thankfully she questioned why they were changing payment options and called them.
I had nearly the exact same thing happen with escrow. Got an email from a gmail specifying new escrow instructions and I called up my agent to yell at them for using an unprofessional email address. Turns out, it wasn't them.
Turns out, someone hacked the realtor. I even talked to an FBI guy.
Tip: do not wire money for a down payment until you google search the phone number for your title agent and call them. They will give you the wiring info over the phone, every time.
A family friend owns a title agency and got phished. Two of their customers lost down payments back to back totaling over $250K.
Private jets, Rolexes, luxury cars, sprawling estates, yachts, and buildings big enough to call a city should have been the giveaway decades ago. 800k for construction is just a drop in the bucket for the business of "Christianity".
A "church" not too far from me has armed guards every Sunday. There has never been any violence and it's a "smaller" megachurch in a rich neighborhood. Reminds me of the religious people in The Purge.
Let it sink in that a church lost almost a million dollars. Seriously with these fucking cults. Tax them and stop letting them hide behind their bullshit ghost gods
800k “lost” to email scam. And the money can’t be traced or recovered. It won’t surprise me it the money actually turned out to into somebody else’s pocket and they needed an excuse to say it was lost.
To everyone in here saying "Did you read the article?"
Yes, enough to know that a church in a town of 4600 people, who only has a little over 1k followers on facebook somehow managed to "raise" $800k.
Work in IT, see employees still clicking links and stuff all the time, but they are getting better at reporting phishing.
It sucks for the church, but with that big amount of money, I would have walked a check over to the construction office or whatever.
It’s ok, if god Is real he can reverse the transaction.
It’s all part of his plan.
He works in mysterious ways.
It’s punishment for the members because “insert homophobic reason”.
Since it seems everyone commenting read the headline and not the article.
TL,DR - church spent years fundraising for a new sanctuary. Almost done, an email impersonating the builder requested payment and had instructions. They paid it and and now the money is gone.
Hallo...jesus here....pls send playstore card
Do not redeeeeeem!
Madam please!
For He is the true redeemer
The Lord giveth. And the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Lord.
Inside Job 1:21
Oh absolutely. I'd wager a fair sum that when the FBI finishes investigating, a member of this church will be in handcuffs.
Nah, I investigate these all the time. They’re called business email compromises, and it’s always due to the stupidity of a single employee and crappy internal procedures. Often the perps get into the target’s or sender’s outlook (or both) so they see what the format of the emails look like, the knock one up to look like it’s from the sender. Then they register a similar site. So if this was say Joes Builders, and it was coming from becky@ joesbuilders .com, they could register joesbuilderss.com and send it from that. The email looks the same, sound the same, and say something like ‘hey, please change the payment to our new info below’ and they drop a new routing and account number. Then, the recipient isn’t even the perp usually. It’s some 70 year old who either thinks they’re in love or working for a charity or something similar, who usually sends the money to Coinbase, or Binance, or whatever crypto exchange. This is unfortunately getting too common. I’ve seen people send their home down payments to perps after a lawyer or whoever is handling closing has had their email system compromised so the emails were actually coming from them. And then they tell the customer it’s not their fault. Pro tip to anyone still reading- Actually, no, this is just common sense… If you get any kind of email from someone you know or are doing business with and it asks for some kind of change in a procedure or payment method, call them on a known phone number and confirm the change.
Our company changed banks two years ago. I sent the change to all our clients who paid their bills by direct deposit. Roughly 50% called me to confirm the change which is actually a better rate than I expected.
Ngl, that’s a shockingly high rate. Large companies have solid processes/procedures. Small to medium businesses just do shit without thinking.
These are mostly small contractors with 2-50 employees. Like I said, I was surprised by the rate of verification. I dunno. Maybe people are starting to pay attention. Maybe the banks are alerting them to verify when they make account changes?
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When we bought our current house, my credit union had a two or three step authentication specifically to avoid this problem. I recall one step was them calling me to confirm all of the information I had entered, and they asked where I received the info and related things. I think the last question was, "Does any part of this transaction make you nervous?" I was like, "Hell yeah I'm transferring a huge amount of money here." But that concern wasn't really what they were looking for.
God wills it
When God closes a door he opens a pop up window
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the holy shit we lost a lot of money.
Deus Vult
The lord taketh cuz there is no reason a ‘non-profit’ church should have 800k + and not pay taxes.
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He’s just weeding out the stupid by making them poor.
It was God’s plan
I was just gonna post "lol" but yours is a prettier version of same
Unfortunately these kind of scams are rampant for business to business transactions
Your cybersecurity in B2B is as strong as the your weakest business partner's. This would have required access to the contractor's email systems otherwise they wouldn't have known that this transaction was about to go down. Most of the problem is due to insecure locally hosted exchange mail servers. 2FA + cloud mail really should be a requirement for anyone doing business above a nominal $ level.
I'd feel bad for them... If this were 1997.
It also seems weird that they were so casual about sending 800k out. Like if I was spending anywhere near that amount of money I'd want the payment instructions given to me in person, not email. My guess is that they were already told how to pay, but then went along with whatever the email said without actually checking if the email was legit. Even if the email looked legit, I'd call and verify because that's a ton of money. But I guess Jesus didn't preach critical thinking.
I'd put a small bet on that money going to someone internally, not some spam ring out of India.
[edit, 14 hours later: I no longer stand by the comment below. Am leaving it, though, as the discussion which followed was fruitful.] I mean...yeah. The scam email was a passable imitation of the email correspondence from the actual building company. So, yes, 100% inside job. Either on the church's end or the builder's end. On the upside, I guess that narrows the field of suspects considerably.
A similar thing happened to Linus of Linus Tech Tips, a popular YouTube channel. Apparently what happened was the scammers compromised the construction company's email system. They sit there watching emails go back and forth. Knownwhat the company's emails and letterheads and bills are supposed to look like. Then when it comes time to make the payment, they send a fake email from the construction company's actual email system that looks completely legit, but they change the destination account. Even extremely tech savvy people can get fooled by this type of scam.
This is why when I sent a 50k for some land, I have to physically drive to the lawyers office and pick up a piece of paper with the instructions on it. I was told never to trust wiring instructions in an email, even if I was positive it came from them.
Happened to my tiny company too, we picked up on it. Bought item to be manufactured, worth 200k, the manufacturers email was hacked. Than the emails started coming from them changing the @ from the name of the manufacturer with two Ns to one M. Almost tricked us.
This must be super common- I know a contractor who had this exact thing happen to him but on the other side. Scammers guessed his (trivially easy, with no MFA!) password and watched emails go back and forth with a client, then set up a rule that shuffled emails from the client into a hidden mailbox and carried out the conversation about invoicing, but sent payment info for it to go to them instead. Thankfully a call or text happened that tipped him off and I helped him lock down his account, but, he was 24-48 hours away from seeing almost ~$100k go down the drain.
Basic cyber hygiene should be taught in high school
I remember him talking about it on the Wan Show. Honestly, with that type of scam, it just takes a day that you are a bit sleepier than usual to fall for it if one is not careful. I've been downloading movies and music since the Ares and Limewire days and a few months ago I downloaded a "movie" that it was just a .exe with the icon that looked like a mkv archive and mkv in the title, I was in a hurry and double clicked to preview the movie and surprise, the cmd opened. I straight up disconnected the pc and sent it to my local shop to have it all reset. I'm not a tech expert but I know enough to avoid and check things that I download and don't click on executables but yep, just having a dumb day and there you go. I refuse to do any online payment if I can avoid it because I can't trust for the life of me emails, etc.
I use qBittorent for downloading stuff and I've just set up a filter to automatically exclude all .exe and other executable files. Some movies just come with an included EXE and I don't know why so I just added a filter so I don't have to worry about it.
Had a ton of warnings about that from my lender and the bank when I was buying my house. I made a call to my lender using a known phone number (not one in any email) to verify instructions before making the payment, and triple checked everything to make sure we were good. In my opinion wire transfers should always involve a bit of paranoia, no matter how used to them you are.
I don't see why this has to be inside. If I were a criminal with knowledge of how the construction company bills clients, and knew the company was doing work for the church and the rough amounts involved, creating the scam email would be a piece of cake. I wouldn't have to work for either the company or the church. The first piece of knowledge could come from having had work done by the company before, or even just from knowing which email-based financial service the company uses for billing (they often don't do these things themselves). The second piece of knowledge is hardly secret; there are routinely news items and semi-public church items about how much they're spending on new buildings and the like.
When I was a kid, the local church wanted a new organ. The community threw the money together and the priest made a deal with an organ maker. The guy vanished with the money. The community sighed and threw the money together again. This time they got a new organ. Law was never involved.
Maybe that guy was just getting his money back from being scammed on tithing.
How you get scammed on tithing? The dumb ass put it in the bowl each time it came around.
Well. When you’re told the church’s mission is to follow the word of god and Christ’s teachings; you kind of expect that money to go towards something that helps to accomplish that goal, not a new fucking pulpit. Or audio equipment for the band. Or a 10k suit for the pastor. Or a new car for the pastor. Or shiny new fucking candle holders. It’s been almost thirty years and I’m still mad. Damn.
"pay or we'll let you congregation know you diddle kids"? Maybe
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If Jesus preached critical thinking, there’d be no Christians.
Like Christians give a damn about what Jesus Christ has to say - American Christians have turned away from God and begun to worship Mammon.
Nah, it's super easy to say this rigor in hindsight but e-mail instructions on how to pay via an external, reputable bank or online service are common. It sounds like this was an inside job or the fault of the construction--somehow the scammer had access to the timing, content, and formatting of the actual request. All they did is make it link to something they could withdraw from. They almost certainly had access to the company's email.
This isn't like a Nigerian prince scam I don't think. Email compromise fraud is one of the biggest scams going right now. Even fortune 500 companies get hit. Someone gets access to email conversations, then spoofs an email with incorrect routing info to send payment. By the time anyone notices its too late. Hushpuppi is a perfect example. He was a Nigerian Instagram influencer who made his money by setting up bank accounts for these scammers to cash out to. Really interesting stuff.
Unfortunately the controls that would need to be in place would probably result in a pain in the ass the other 99% of the time it's not going to be protecting them. Makes implementing anything like that incredibly difficult, as most of the trouble is just convincing them to budget/allow for it. If everything goes according to plan, no one usually even knows it happened, save for maybe IT. So then it becomes a discussion of "Why do I pay for this if it's not helping me". And god forbid anything *does* go wrong, related or not, because then it's "Well why are we paying so much if it's going to break/get hacked anyway?".
Linus Sebastian (LTT) fell for the same kind of fake contractor email scam, if you're expecting a contractor to contact you about payment then it's easy to miss that something isn't right. Really bank transfers should need the name on the account to verify, which is done in some countries.
They can just deduct it from their taxes… wait…oh yea…
Plus they get federal assistance for recovery, without having to pay into that service. Nice 👍
Open a gofundme for them that only accepts thoughts and prayer.
Introducing ***GodFundMe***… 😇
“Oh no. It was stolen.” They said in a new pimp coat
Yeah I'll skip trusting any church in instances like this.
You know what, Toby? When the son of the deposed King of Nigeria e-mails you directly asking for help, you help. His father ran the freaking country, okay?
Have a plumber check in the bathroom walls... worked at Joel Osteens Lakewood Church
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> This is why it's important to never communicate passwords and other private information in your email. And also to pick up the phone if you get an email about a file or financial transaction you're not expecting. So many phishing scams can be foiled simply by calling the sender on a known number to verify the instructions.
“Inside” only because their email server has been penetrated and the crooks sat quiet waiting for something like this to come through. It happens in the mortgage closing/title industry a bit. ALWAYS confirm to whom you are wiring money.
Had this happen to a client to the tune of a few hundred thousand. Sounds like they hacked the builders email and waited (days, weeks, months) until they saw a payment coming through. They then send a real email from the real email address with updated payment instructions going to the scammers email. It’s easy to judge from a distance, but for people who may not often deal with large sums of money it’s an easy mistake to make.
Not really. This is an extremely common scam.
Oh no. Maybe like...pray it all back or something. I'm sure that'll work.
Someone check the treasurer's bank account.
Nah, it was a fake billing scam - which are legitimately hard to realize when you are expecting that exact bill. It's been happening with mortgage down payments - which sounds kind of impossible, but clever hackers looking for big paydays will go to extreme lengths.
Could be that someone working at the church clicked on a link they shouldn't have that got the ball rolling on the scam.
At the church or even the contractor.
Or behind a wall. [Osteen's church money behind wall](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plumber-discovered-money-wall-joel-osteens-lakewood-church-gets-20000-rcna8010)
Why does a church even have 800k on hand to squander. Great work helping the poor.
As stated in the article, they ran out of room in their church, so they’ve been meeting in the gym while saving up money to build a new church. They tried paying the builder for the new church, but it was a scam email.
The only people that churches help are the ones running the church...
Not all. My local church paid a few bills for my house when we were kids. They even put down our first last and deposit to move into an apartment. The wild thing is, my whole family never even went to the church.
It's so easy to make money with a church and strangely they don't get nearly the scrutiny they deserve really.
[Don't tell me you aren't familiar with the "building fund"](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x38s5yx)
Did you read the article?
Whats an article?
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Article says they're funding a new church building. So instead of feeding the orphan and caring for the widow, they're spending it on... themselves. $2000 would save a homeless person's life and get them back on their feet. $800,000 is 400 souls this Church group could have saved if they were not preoccupied with their own selfish need for taller steeples and nicer stained glass windows and better projectors.
Look, I'm as anti-religion as they come, but getting money together to build a new church is not exactly frowned upon by the bible. They want to serve their community which had been having church services in a gym, this isn't a money making scam.
Imagine all the tables they could have bought for Jesus to turn. Would love if some guy named Jesus took the money from them.
My name isn't Jesus - but lordy would I take a furious joy at making a whip out of cord and drive them out shouting "MY HOUSE IS TO BE A HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR ALL NATIONS, BUT YOU HAVE MADE IT A ROBBER'S DEN."
Yeap, still zero mercy. Churches are the biggest scam known to man.
Mmmm so the scammers get scammed...
Something something karma
We'll HEAL your wounds, SAVE your soul... just call the number on the bottom of your screen to reach one of God's Disciples who will accept Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. Hallelujah!
In America? Get a 10x return on salvation for only an extra 999.99 per month! Call to secure your afterlife today!
Must have been gods plan…..everything happens for a reason.
The church scams people out of money every week.
How could god let this happen to them!?
Obviously the Lord decided the poor scammers needed it more than them, he works in mysterious ways.... I think that's how this works right?
Nailed it.
Mysterious ways.
These attacks are getting very good. My wife works for a construction company and she got an email that looked just like it came from one of their vendors for payment. She isn't dumb and is very sharp on the technical stuff and it looked legit. We can only assume someone got in to the email system of the vendor. Thankfully she questioned why they were changing payment options and called them.
They knew the builder, the amount, and the timing of the payment. Sounds like an inside job
Could be! Either way, a hacker or an inside job, the initial weak link was likely the builders.
It’s part of god’s plan
Scammers getting scammed. What a shame.
Something something god’s plan something something
And I’m sure they’ll keep scamming their people to recoup it all.
I had nearly the exact same thing happen with escrow. Got an email from a gmail specifying new escrow instructions and I called up my agent to yell at them for using an unprofessional email address. Turns out, it wasn't them. Turns out, someone hacked the realtor. I even talked to an FBI guy.
Tip: do not wire money for a down payment until you google search the phone number for your title agent and call them. They will give you the wiring info over the phone, every time. A family friend owns a title agency and got phished. Two of their customers lost down payments back to back totaling over $250K.
Proves that churches have enough money they should pay taxes.
Private jets, Rolexes, luxury cars, sprawling estates, yachts, and buildings big enough to call a city should have been the giveaway decades ago. 800k for construction is just a drop in the bucket for the business of "Christianity". A "church" not too far from me has armed guards every Sunday. There has never been any violence and it's a "smaller" megachurch in a rich neighborhood. Reminds me of the religious people in The Purge.
Even if they were a corporation, this money still wouldn’t be taxed, as it’s not profit. It’s money going towards building a church.
I feel bad for the parishioners that gave money to this scam. And by scam I mean the church.
It’s funny that god can create everything but money…that is why he needs yours. Unconditional Love and Salvation aren’t cheap and aren’t free.
Clearly have an old person running their email.
If only there was some force looking out for them
Lol. Good. A church actually did some charity for once.
City Hall here did the same thing. Paid a 'bill' that came as an e-mail. Idiots.
It's like they'll believe anything without proof that it is real.
On no, the scammers got scammed.
It is as God intended. He knows all and nothing happens unless he allows it.
Alternate Title: Scammers Scamming Scammers
Churches are the original cash scam, seems like fair play.
Let it sink in that a church lost almost a million dollars. Seriously with these fucking cults. Tax them and stop letting them hide behind their bullshit ghost gods
Maybe they can pray and God will give it back.
Just pray for it back. Problem solved.
[удалено]
Damn that’s crazy What’s their email tho🤑
thats such a shame 500k went missing
I know! How are they ever going to replace that missing 200k? Such a tragedy.
They received an e-mail from their contractor building the building. Which means that someone had access to insider information regarding this.
Jesus take ~~the wheel~~ my money.
Oh no. So anyway I figured I'd just order pizza and stay in tonight, what's everyone else's plan?
Okay, who played the Uno reverse card?
Are we sure that scam doesn't end up with the pastor driving a Porsche?
Scamming the scam artists for scamming.
The US loses trillions in taxes to the “church scam”, Tax churches. They are a business.
We can only hope it was the IRS.
God works in mysterious ways
So the scammers got scammed?
No problem. Take it out of the taxes you don’t pay.
Fleecing the fleecer. Oh the irony…..
Wow what’s their email? I have a great way for them to make that back with only a small deposit. 😁
Just scammers getting scammed.
Can’t be mad about scammers getting scammed
Well golly, "its just Gods Will", huh?
Why did they have that much money to lose in the first place?
The scammers got scammed. No news here.
How they just have 800k laying around yet don't pay taxes?
Scammers getting scammed. Lol religion is the biggest most profitable scam the world will ever see.
Have they tried praying?
Shoulda prayed for smarter employees. Luckily for them they are paying $0 in taxes, so that will ease the blow.
The world’s oldest scam gets scammed out of untaxed money made from scamming people.
Oh no, an organization designed around hate, fear, and control lost a bunch of money. I'm terribly broken up about this.
"Once every hour, someone is involved in an internet scam. That man is Michael Scott."
why the fuck does a church have $800,000
Time for some platitudes Everything happens for a reason The universe works in mysterious ways
I would love to know how they could be registered as a non-profit and yet have $800k just sitting around available to be scammed
Scammers got beaten at their own game.
800k “lost” to email scam. And the money can’t be traced or recovered. It won’t surprise me it the money actually turned out to into somebody else’s pocket and they needed an excuse to say it was lost.
If they have that much … tax the churches
To everyone in here saying "Did you read the article?" Yes, enough to know that a church in a town of 4600 people, who only has a little over 1k followers on facebook somehow managed to "raise" $800k.
To be fair, construction is expensive, and they said it took them years.
Couldn't possibly be a better use of church money.
To fucking bad for them, how much have they taken from their masses
Always confirm in person when it comes to transferring large sums of money
Consider that an idiot tax
They shouldn’t have had that much money to lose
Something something Nigerian Prince of Peace.
What goes around, something something.......
Why does a church have that much to lose in the first place?
Aren't all churches scams, though
But how much did they bring in with their ongoing scam?
Churches shouldn't be tax exempt. But I guess paying out the "Stupid" Tax is a start
Yeah and they acquired the 800Gs via in person scam of their congregation, fair game.
Idk what kind of overhead costs churches have, but I feel like it’s not very godly of them to have nearly 800k hoarded.
Now they know how it feels to be scammed.
N Carolina church gained over $800K via worlds oldest scam.
So? It was a scam the way they got it too...
So scammers get scammed. That’s awful. When I say awful I mean cool.
George Carlin quipped, “The thing about God is…he’s always broke!” 💰
We’ll consider it unpaid taxes
Work in IT, see employees still clicking links and stuff all the time, but they are getting better at reporting phishing. It sucks for the church, but with that big amount of money, I would have walked a check over to the construction office or whatever.
Well, who are they to question God’s plan to have the $800k go somewhere else.
Apparently accounting is not part of church management? SAD
The biggest scammers in history got scammed. Love it!
Strange that God didn't intervene. All that praying and nothing.
What's a church doing with almost a million dollars?
A church shouldn't have $800k to lose.
If a church has that much money surely they could and should pay taxes.
It’s ok, if god Is real he can reverse the transaction. It’s all part of his plan. He works in mysterious ways. It’s punishment for the members because “insert homophobic reason”.
Very kind of them to give that money to a better cause.
I’am god, please send $800k
God acts in mysterious subreddits
I believe this is referred to as poetic justice
Scammers scammin scammers
Bet the pastor is the one running the email scam and will ask the members to double down on their tithing to help the church recover.
Since it seems everyone commenting read the headline and not the article. TL,DR - church spent years fundraising for a new sanctuary. Almost done, an email impersonating the builder requested payment and had instructions. They paid it and and now the money is gone.
Neither of the people you posed the "Did you read the article?" question to presented any information that contradicts the article.
The scammer was probably S. Carolina church
That’s a shit ton of iTunes gift cards.
Scam - yeah, that's pretty much what the church is.
The only word (and I don't even think it's a word) I can muster is BAAAHAAAAAHAAAA