The email address of a government employee has been hacked and scam emails claiming payment receipt of relief funds have been sent out, certified fraud examiner, Paul O’Sullivan, told eTNW.
The email address is Doris.Leshabane@gauteng.gov.za and the email reads: “Find payment receipt for the disbursement for the COVID-19 relief funds and do allocate appropriately and do advice (sic) accordingly”, followed by a link to “view payment online”.
After clicking on the hyperlink, the recipient is directed to a file deposit site in New Zealand, with a 29kb MS Word file called ‘payment receipt’. “Do not open. This may be either malware or a Trojan-Horse type of virus,” Paul warns.
“Any innocent person could easily click on that and get their machine infected or, worse still, download crippling ‘ransomware’.”
