The City of Surrey was defrauded of $2.1 million in 2019 after being tricked into sending the money into the wrong account from a fake email.
The incident only came to light recently when the Ontario Law Society Tribunal released a decision that found a lawyer had committed professional misconduct by allowing the fraudsters to launder $1.7 million of the stolen money through the lawyer’s trust account.
This is the second case to emerge this year of the City of Surrey being defrauded of a large sum of money.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that an ex-employee of the city was under investigation after more than $2.5 million disappeared from 2017 to 2024 through fake cheques, according to allegations in a search warrant obtained by Surrey RCMP.
The former employee, a finance clerk, was