The U.S. Secret Service has recovered $594,000 of the $2.3 million the town of Peterborough lost in an email scam, Town Manager Nicole MacStay said Friday evening.
“On behalf of the Select Board and the residents of Peterborough, I wish to express our sincere gratitude to those agents and the bank employees who worked so hard on our behalf to recover those funds,” MacStay said in an email.
She said the Secret Service worked with People’s Bank and HSBC bank to make the recovery.
Peterborough taxpayers are still out nearly $1.7 million in the scam. Fraudsters sent emails to the town and succeeded in having routing instructions changed for one payment to the ConVal School District and two payments to bridge contractor Beck and Bellucci.
In announcing the scam on Aug. 23, the town said the money had been converted to cryptocurrency and it appeared it could not be recovered by reversing the transactions.