Johnston County Town Scammed For Over $213,000

Clayton Police are trying to recover $213,013 scammed from the Town of Clayton. On November 23, 2022, Clayton Police was notified of a email compromised fraud in which the Town of Clayton was the victim. An unknown suspect spoofed an email belonging to a construction company, which is currently doing contract work for the Town.

The unknown suspect posed as the chief financial officer of the company and requested a change of electronic payment authorization in the amount of $213,013 which was electronically transferred through an Automatic Clearing House (ACH) transaction.

Police immediately initiated an investigation into the fraud. Through investigative means, Clayton Detectives discovered the money was transferred to a bank account owned by a fictitious paving company in Ohio. Once the bank received the funds, the money was quickly redistributed to other fraudulent business accounts.

Clayton Police investigators traveled to Ohio and executed a search warrant at a residence in Reynoldsburg, Ohio with the assistance of the Reynoldsburg Police Department. Erin Nicole Martin, 32, was taken into custody and charged with Obtaining Property by False Pretenses. Clayton Police seized several items of evidence from the residence and determined that Martin is part of an organized crime group targeting construction companies to facilitate their fraud schemes.

Martin remains in custody at the Franklin County Detention Center in Columbus, Ohio awaiting extradition back to Johnston County. The case remains under investigation and additional victims and suspects have been identified. Clayton Police have seized additional bank accounts under control of the suspect(s) and are attempting to recover the funds fraudulently taken from the Town of Clayton.

7 COMMENTS

  1. If they put forth an effort like this when the average citizen gets scammed it may have prevented the town from being a victim.

  2. For many years the Town of Clayton was scammed by it’s elected officials. Now I figured out how easy it is to scam the citizens of Clayton.

  3. It’s genius, they know the bureaucracy has no controls on construction spending. The money is probably in Eastern Europe by now.

  4. At least they didn’t make the payment in Amazon cards… that’s something, I guess. Sounds like they’ll recover the funds

  5. Headline ….”Fraud discovered when officials failed to receive scheduled kickbacks”. By reporters – karma and Gotcha, The can’t make this stuff up daily news outlet.

  6. If you work for the ToC, this should come as no surprise. The number of emails we get reminding employees not to open suspicious documents, not to click links, etc. is…..concerning.

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