The municipality of Differdange became the victim of a major fraud scheme during the development of its new municipal building.
According to Mayor Guy Altmeisch, who confirmed information first reported by the Tageblatt newspaper, fraudsters intercepted correspondence between the municipality and an architecture firm working on the project.
The criminals hacked into the architecture firm’s email server, then contacted the municipality by email to claim that the firm’s bank details had changed.
One of the perpetrators also phoned municipal staff, further convincing them to process the payment to the new fraudulent bank account. As a result, a payment exceeding €407,000 was sent to the fraudsters.
The scam only came to light when the legitimate architecture firm later complained that it had not received its funds. At that point, the municipality alerted the police and requested the bank to block the transfer.
However, by then, the money had already been withdrawn and left little hope of recovering the stolen funds.
Although Mayor Altmeisch emphasised that municipal staff had not been at fault in the incident, security measures would be reviewed and reinforced to prevent similar incidents in the future.
