Frederick City Victim Of Fraud, Mayor Says

Mayor says it has to do with converting  the former Wm. Donald Schaefer Building as a new police headquarters.William Donald Schaefer BuildingFrederick, Md (KM) An investigation is underway into a fraud perpetrated on the City of Frederick. It had to do with converting the former William Donald Schaefer Building into a new police headquarters, where it’s believed the city was taken for a considerable amount of money.During Tuesday’s “Morning News Express” on WFMD, Mayor Michael O’Connor didn’t provide a lot of details about the fraud. “As an active investigation, there’s not really much more that I would or would want to say about it to endanger that investigation,” he said. “But, yeah, the city was a victim and we’re working with the authorities to track down the people responsible.”During the program, Mayor O’Connor was asked what the city is doing to prevent this from happening again. “What do we put in place to make sure that somebody doesn’t get mugged the second time? What do we put in place to make sure that somebody doesn’t get robbed a second time? What do we tell people when they’ve be carjacked. how to not get  carjacked the second time,” he asked. “When you’re a victim, we don’t often say ‘victim do something in order to make sure this doesn’t happen to you again.’ We try and work on all of the protections that we can.”He said the city will continue its efforts to guard against becoming a future victim of a fraud. “You run a system of any size or scale, you have of a lot of open doors,” the Mayor said. “Employees are open doors. Your doors are open doors. The banks are open doors. There are lots of opportunities for people who mean harm to get in and infiltrate systems in ways that have bad intent.””Our obligation as an organization is to make sure that everyday we’re working with our IT staff, with our police department, with our employees to do everything—our emergency management and security people–to do everything in our power to secure our people, our -faculties and our information to the greatest extent possible,” Mayor O’Connor continued.He said this is “an ongoing effort.”By Kevin McManus