Council forced to apologise after wasting tenth of budget on simple online scam

Officials at the council made an “advance payment” to a man for “consultative work” in December 2022.

The payment was made to a person named Oluwafeni Odunuga as part of an authorised push payment (APP) scam.

This is a type of fraud where a criminal deceives people into transferring their money, according to HSBC.

The small council soon realised that they had fallen victim to a con.

Around ten per cent of its annual budget was lost as a result of the scam.

A statement was released by Harlech Community Council: “We wish to take the opportunity to apologise to the residents of Harlech regarding the loss of the £9,000 rate payers money as a result of a scam that happened last December.

“Although an apology was given at the council meeting (September 4), where members of the public were in attendance, the community council would now like to extend this apology to those residents of Harlech that were not present at the meeting.

“Following this meeting of the Harlech Community Council it was decided, although the council’s financial procedures have been tightened in accordance with the Internal Auditor’s report, to form a sub committee to look into the way forward the council can work with regards to financial matters.”

Officials were alerted to the con when HSBC told them they had been victim to an APP scam.

In July after the incident had been made public, a Plaid Cymru Gwynedd councillor for Harlech and Llanbedr, said: “This matter has been dealt with by the community council and will not be discussed further.”

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However earlier this month, councillors apologised formally to disgruntled residents who questioned the council’s finances at a meeting.

The newly released statement extended the apology to all Harlech residents.

A resident who attended the September 4 meeting said: “It rather seems that local residents are losing confidence in the council, several turned up to ask questions at the meeting.”

Audit Wales said: “Once we’ve confirmed the audit work has been completed for Harlech Community Council, we’ll be able to determine how to report our audit findings to the council.”