BRUNSWICK

A computer scammer posing as Brunswick School Superintendent Paul Perzanoski made off with some personal information of school department employees gleaned from W-2 forms. Luckily, however, the district employee who sent the forms to the scammer intentionally left out important pieces of information.

Perzanoski said an email sent to the business office clerk last week requesting the information could have been construed as legitimate.

“It came across looking like me,” Perzanoski said. “It was a really good facsimile, but the return address was an AOL account.”

The employee was wary enough of the unorthodox request and excluded Social Security numbers and dates of birth — essentially sending useless information to a potential identity thief.

According to Brunswick Police Cmdr. Mark Waltz, a second email was received Tuesday by the same employee saying, “Hey, I need the Social Security numbers and dates of birth.”

That’s when the employee became suspicious and spoke to Perzanoski. Realizing they’d been duped, they notified police.

Perzanoski said Brunswick police and the school department’s own technology crew are investigating.

Last week, the Maine School Management Association sent out a warning that schools may be targeted for such crimes.

Waltz said that while it looked like the email was coming from Perzanoski, if the employee had clicked on the sender’s property information, they would have seen it was- n’t his email address.

Waltz said most any email program can be altered to show any name as the sender.

Perzanoski quickly followed up with a letter to school department employees, explaining that although their W-2 information was sent to the fake address, their personal information remains secure.

Perzanoski said that salary information for district employees is public information accessible to anyone and addresses can be obtained through any number of Internet searches.

School officials say Biddeford and Kittery schools have also been targeted.

“I guess they’ve sent stuff to other districts. Kittery and Biddeford, but they were able to catch it. By the time I got asked the question as to why I wanted this, it was already too late,” Perzanoski said.

Perzanoski said he was assured by police that the perpetrators would be unable to apply for credit cards or file taxes under the stolen identities without Social Security numbers.

“They’re pretty insistent too — they’re still sending us stuff in the email late yesterday,” Perzanoski said.

Unfortunately, there is little likelihood the police can track down the person behind the scam email, which likely originated overseas. However, an officer is requesting a subpoena in order to get the email subscriber information.

Waltz said that because no sensitive information had been passed along, the police are treating this as an attempted offense rather than a successful one.

With tax season underway, Waltz noted that if this scam had been successful, the person at the other end of the email would have had all the information needed to try to fill out a tax return and file for people’s refunds.

To help avoid falling prey to this kind of phishing scam, Waltz advised people to check the email properly and maybe call the person you’re sending the email to. Make sure you know who you are sending the email to before responding.

Luckily this employee followed the rule of not putting Social Security numbers and dates of birth in an unsecured email, “and that’s what kept this from becoming a disaster,” Waltz said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

dmcintire@timesrecord.com, dmoore@timesrecord.com

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