Cleveland Public Library scammed out of $400K in payment redirection fraud

CLEVELAND (WJW) -- Scams can happen to any of us at any time. Recently, The Cleveland Public Library discovered it sent nearly $400,000 to a fake vendor last summer, in what's called a payment redirection scam.

In its yearly Cleveland Public Library audit, the Office of Ohio State Auditor Keith Faber found the June 2024 payment happened because the library didn't have proper controls to detect such scams.

Auditors say that library officials changed bank payment information after a request from a scammer pretending to be a legitimate vendor.

The way payment redirection scams work is that scammers will gain access to business email accounts (or else, create a similar-looking email address) and send invoices or requests to update payment information. Because the email appears to be from so