ALBUQUERQUE, NM - Today, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) became aware that the City of Albuquerque was defrauded in a scam the OSA sent an alert about earlier this week. The City complied with a fraudulent request to change vendor payment information that diverted at least $400,000 in public funds to a scammer. The OSA sent out the fraud alert earlier this week after an almost identical scam resulted in the loss of over $200,000 in construction funds for a project at the San Antonio Elementary School in Socorro.

"Unfortunately, the City of Albuquerque was hit by a scam that cost it over $400,000 in taxpayer dollars," stated State Auditor Tim Keller. "This is now the second entity in New Mexico that we are aware of that was tricked into diverting money to imposters posing as legitimate businesses. We want to again remind all governments to use the best practices we've outlined to prevent this."

Pursuant to state law, government agencies are required to report all criminal violations involving financial affairs to the OSA.

Please see the previous release about the scam here: https://www.saonm.org/media/news_pdf/4-3-17_OSA_issues_scam_alert.pdf