Leo Smith, who supervised the financial affairs of Peterborough, retired effective Tuesday, eight days after the announcement that the town had been scammed out of $2.3 million.
Smith, who worked for the town for 11 years, two as finance director, did not immediately return requests for comment.
Town Manager Nicole MacStay said some staff members targeted in the fraud were placed on leave while the U.S. Secret Service investigated the crime. She didn’t release their names.
As a supervisor, Smith, 69, had responsibilities under fraud prevention requirements in the town code book, including being aware of what could go wrong, and putting in place effective monitoring, review and control procedures to prevent wrongdoing or to detect it if it should occur.
The town was hit by a cyber crime known as business email compromise in which a request by email to change the financial routing of a vendor payment is acted upon without first calling the vendor or otherwise authenticating it.
Such verification is a basic accounting best practice and is recommended by the FBI, which has seen tremendous growth in this type of crime. It is also a standing procedure in Peterborough, said MacStay.
She…
