Hacker Rips Off More Than $640,000 From DOE

A report released yesterday by the City's Special Commissioner Office revealed that a hacker stole more than $640,000 from the Department of Education over a four year period. Yes, the same DOE that has cut busing for 7th and 8th graders and cut free school lunches. As the News puts it, it is "a shocking example of how the agency's lax oversight has cost taxpayers."

Hacker Albert Attoh broke into the DOE's petty cash account continually between 2003 and 2007, and distributed the codes to others to use to pay for their student loans, gas bills and purchases at Home Depot (they in turn paid Attoh for the codes). Attoh was caught last year, and sentenced to a year in prison and fined $275,000 this past April for the theft. The DOE claims that after learning of the break-in, they "put in place a tight set of controls and processes to ensure the security of petty cash accounts," according to spokesman Danny Kanner, but a similar incident took place last year, when a clerk stole more than $60,000 because no one looked at statements that showed his personal purchases, which included global travel trips with his family.

"It is difficult to understand how the [Department of Education] accumulated years of account statements, reflecting hundreds of thousands of public dollars spent to pay bills, but did not review them," Special Commissioner Richard Condon wrote in his report. Maybe the dog ate their statements?