East Lansing officials are warning residents about a scam involving fake invoices that appear to come from city departments.
A homeowner with an application before the city recently received a fraudulent invoice demanding payment by wire transfer. The City of East Lansing does not accept wire transfers for any payments.
The email used publicly available information to appear legitimate, but it was a fraudulent attempt to steal money, officials said.
The city reminds residents and business owners to carefully verify any invoice before making a payment. Officials recommend taking these steps:
Verify the sender's email address. All legitimate City of East Lansing emails come from an address ending in @cityofeastlansing.com. Check the full email address, not just the display name, as scammers often create lookalike domains. In this case, the email address had cityofeastlansing before the @ symbol: Planning-Dept.cityofeastlansingmi [@] usa.com.
Look for unusual payment instructions. The city will never ask residents to wire money. Payments are made online through official city portals, by mail or in person.
Examine the invoice carefully. Typos, inconsistent formatting or generic language may signal a fake. Because some city service information is publicly available, scammers may include real details to make an invoice appear more convincing.
Confirm the payment directly with the city. If you receive an unexpected or suspicious invoice, do not respond to it. Instead, call (517) 337-1731 to speak to the relevant department.
Avoid clicking on attachments or links. These may contain harmful software or lead to a fraudulent website.
The City of East Lansing takes scam complaints very seriously. Scam complaints are referred to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) to help protect other people from being targeted by scammers.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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