MINNEAPOLIS — Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey's office says an email sent out from his account Thursday morning promising a "new financial offer" was part of a phishing scam.
The email was sent out at 10:40 a.m. with "City of Minneapolis Proposal [Secure]" in the subject line. It came from Frey's official email address with the city.
The message carried an attachment and read, "Please download and view below a proposal from The City of Minneapolis for your review, we have a new financial offer that I considered you might be interested in based on the history of your company and decided to give you an exclusive insight first before making it public."
KARE 11 reached out to the City immediately after the email went out, and the mayor's office confirmed that the email was a scam.
“Earlier this morning, it appears the mayor’s email account was hacked through a phishing scam," reads a statement from the Mayor's Office. "A similar phishing email then went out from the Mayor’s account to a number of people, including some media outlets. We are still working with our IT department to ensure that the Mayor’s account is now secure and to identify how many people received the email."
The statement went on to say that the Mayor's Office has been advised by the city's IT department that anyone who received this email should delete it without opening either the email or the attachment.
"We apologize to those who were targeted as a result of this breach,” the statement concludes.
