Payroll Scam Targeting Municipalities

Please be advised of a payroll scam targeting municipal courts. The scammers are targeting judicial bank accounts, but the scam emails are sent to municipal employees. The emails are sent to change a judge’s direct deposit information and the person sending the email pretends to be the judge asking the municipality to change the direct deposit information for the Judge’s paycheck. The emails are typically sent from an outside nycourts.gov email address or by spoofing the nycourts.gov domain to make it look like it’s coming from the court system’s email. If the municipality receives an email from a judge or court clerk, either from a non-nycourts.gov or an email that spoofs the nycourts.gov email address, the municipality should immediately inform the judge and/or court clerk directly before making any changes that the email requests. If it was not a legitimate email, OCA is asking that the municipal employees report it to [email protected]. We have also advised courts that once they are made aware of these malicious emails, that they should be reporting it to law enforcement.