Parishioners of Elkin Valley Baptist Church were expecting to be worshiping in their brand new sanctuary by May of this year, but construction is unlikely to be completed by then after more than $793,000 the church had raised for the project was stolen by internet scammers.
The church, founded in 1884, had long outgrown the building on North Elkin Drive constructed in 1954 and had been holding services in its family life center since 2016. In September of last year, the church broke ground on a new facility after raising funds for the project for seven years.
On Nov. 4, Elkin Valley Baptist Church received an email from Landmark construction, their builder, with payment instructions. A second, nearly identical email, came in just after the first. The emails arrived on a Friday when the office was closed, church leaders explained. Upon checking the emails on Monday, a church representative responded, unknowingly, to a cloned email.
“We followed those instructions, not knowing, and paid the bill. It wasn’t until several days later that we were contacted by Landmark about paying the bill and we said, ‘we did pay the bill.’ That’s when it was discovered that someone had intercepted the email chain,” explained Senior Pastor Johnny Blevins.
Blevins said the matter was immediately reported to the Elkin Police Department who then turned the case over to the FBI.
“We’re trying to move ahead,” Blevins said of the project.
While they hope to continue, as much as possible, with the construction, Blevins said they have no idea if any of the stolen funds will be recovered.
Associate Pastor Stephen Robbins said the scam was a clever one. The second email that was a spoof of the original one sent from Landmark was identical, with all the same previous emails threads in the body of the email and company logos. The difference that went unnoticed was one letter in the email address itself.
Robbins said the church has retained a cyber investigator to search its computers to see if the scam could have come through spyware or other breach of its internet and cyber communications.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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