Police in Maryland arrest man for phishing theft of $375,000 from Connecticut town

SEYMOUR, CT (WFSB) - A police department in Maryland arrested a man for his role in a phishing scam that led to the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Town of Seymour.

Charles Ukasanya, 48, of Gaithersburg, MD, was taken into custody on an extraditable warrant in his home state.

According Seymour’s first selectwoman, the phishing incident happened over the summer.

“We want to be clear that this was not an instance of hacking or failures in cyber security on the part of the town,” said Annmarie Drugonis, first selectwoman, Town of Seymour. “At no time were our financial systems or network compromised.”

Drugonis said a Board of Education central office employee’s credentials were phished, which led to a bad actor gaining access to the victim’s email box.

“They used this access to send fraudulent money transfer requests to the town finance department under the auspices of requests of the Board of Education for the Teacher Retirement Board (TRB),” she explained. “They did this by using existing legitimate request forms and simply changing the account and routing numbers on the form.”

The town reached out to the central office employee in question to verify the request; however, the bad actors had set up the email box so that any emails concerning the transfer would not reach the intended recipient, the first selectwoman said.

“A review of the town’s processes and procedures concerning money transfers was done, and steps have been put into place to ensure this type of fraud cannot happen again,” Drugonis said. “All town and Central Office employees will continue to receive cyber security training.”

Ukasanya was charged with one count of first-degree larceny, a class B felony.

His bond was set at $60,000.

He will be extradited to Connecticut.

The theft of the funds remained an active investigation on Thursday, according to Seymour police.