TRENTON – Prosecutors are investigating an email fraud operation involving unknown actors pretending to be Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami-Covello.
Scammers targeted Sollami-Covello’s email contacts over the past few months, sending them fraudulent invoices requesting payment, authorities said.
“It was somebody who was using my name and my position to try to get money from people,” the county clerk said Wednesday in an interview with The Trentonian. “It’s criminal. I thought it was right to get the word out to people so they don’t send money.”
Both the public and personal email accounts of Sollami-Covello were fraudulently imitated, authorities said Wednesday in a fraud alert, adding there were reports of fraudulent invoices requesting payment being sent to the clerk’s email contacts from both of her email addresses.
The fraudulent operation used Sollami-Covello’s name and likeness and solicited her contacts, but the scammers apparently did not gain access or hack into the clerk’s email accounts.
“We do not believe her email accounts were hacked,” Casey DeBlasio, a Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman, said Wednesday. “We believe fraudulent invoices were created and sent by someone who was imitating they were being sent from her email accounts.”
The fraudulent emails began a few months ago, Sollami-Covello said, adding she first reported the suspicious activity to Mercer County’s information technology workers and New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness before going to the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.
“I hope they can find these people and have it stop,” Sollami-Covello said, “because at this point it hasn’t stopped. It has been going on for a few months now.”
The Cyber Crimes Unit of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office is currently reviewing the matter. Anyone who believes they have received a fraudulent invoice should contact the Cyber Crimes Unit at (609) 989-6351. In the meantime, authorities are warning the public not to send money or give personal bank information to the fraudulent actors.
If you have a question about an invoice that you feel may be legitimate, please contact the Office of the Mercer County Clerk to verify at (609) 989-6465.
The clerk’s office oversees local elections, processes U.S. passport applications and maintains real estate records, among other services.
