(File photo/paNOW)

By Susan McNeil

Fraud

RM of Buckland says fraud was limited in recent cyber attack

Oct 3, 2025 | 11:07 AM

No more than four property owners in the Rural Municipality of Buckland were impacted by a recent fraud attempt that saw property tax payments diverted from their intended path.

CAO Cori Sarginson estimated around $4,000 was lost and said she is grateful the issue was caught so quickly.

“I’m so grateful it’s not as bad as it could have been. There was a lot of money sitting in that bank account that if they had gone further, it would have been a mess,” she said.

The victims were sending their payments by e-transfer and the money was re-routed to another bank rather than where it was supposed to go.

Sarginson said that the RCMP are investigating, but the RM has also taken a look at its own systems and procedures.

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Initially, they thought three frauds had happened over several days, but that number has changed slightly.

“There were four people that were affected. There is one more that came forward and aside from that, we have re-vamped our security procedures with the email,” she explained.

“The bank has checked, there’s been no fraud in the bank itself so none of our bank accounts were touched, it was just in the re-routing of the e-transfer emails.”

The RM issued an urgent notice on Sept. 29, warning residents to not send any e-transfers.

According to the RCMP, they received the complaint that same day and the investigation is ongoing.

While all the RM’s systems are good to go, anyone who does business with them should still take precautions.

Victims – or potential victims – should contact their banks about how to keep their money secure and also how to spot fraud attempts. Not all banks handle the situation in the same manner.

As always, when any transaction or request seems odd or out of the ordinary, people should stop and check things out before sending money.

“If there’s a little flag in there, just be safe. Double check before you hit the send button,” said Sarginson.

Council will receive an update on the situation on Oct. 14 but the discussion will be in camera because it involves people’s personal situations.

Anyone that has information is asked to call police at 310-RCMP. People wanting to submit information anonymously can do so by contacting Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or online at www.saskcrimestoppers.com.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: @susanmcneil.bsky.social