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Orange County mayor warns of email scam

Published  March 15, 2018 7:46pm EDT
News
FOX 35 Orlando

ORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35_ - The Orange County Mayor's Office is warning residents about an email scam, using her name and office. This, after FOX 35 alerted Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs.

"I received an email, I thought it was Orange County."

The email  looks as official as it gets.  It appears to be from the "Orange County Mayor," asking  people to sign a petition.  It even says it's published by Orange County elected officials. But when it popped in Rocky Ward's inbox, something just seemed off.  "I opened it and it was very strange. Looked like it was from the Mayor herself with her name Teresa Jacobs". The email asking him to log in, with his email and password  to make sure his petition counts.  "It takes you to another page and has you click on a pdf file and my virus scan says not to go there because it was in a danger zone so I didn't go."

Fox 35 alerting the Orange County Mayor's office about the email earlier today,they checked it out.. and soon called it a fake. "It's not legitimate at all. It's a perfect example of fake news going out."
Orange County's Chief Security Officer Peter Miller says it's a phishing scam, used to install viruses and other bad things on your computer. Crooks likely looking for your personal and financial information.
"Maybe look for your taxes, files, things like that." Our investigation, sparking the Mayor's office to do an investigation of their own, " This definitely didn't originate from the Mayor's office it originated from a third party. And when we looked at it with more detail, the third party did what they could do to hide their footprints."

If you look closer the email has the classic warning signs of a scam, with grammar, punctuation errors and a domain difference, "The domain that it ends with @flr.gov.net and if you look at it quickly and see the gov you think it's a legitimate address but looking at it closely and see that it's a .net you know it's not a government address." Soon after we took the email to the Mayor's office a warning going out county wide. Rocky's grateful for the heads up, "Thank you FOX35, thank you for being there for us." 

Miller says they receive 20 to 30-thousand intrusion attempts a day because of phishing.