A North Carolina congregation’s plans to move into a new worship center this spring have been put on hold after cyber criminals stole more than $793,000 from the church in an online scam.
Elkin Valley Baptist Church in Elkin, North Carolina, broke ground on a new sanctuary last September, but about half of the funds that had been raised by the church and earmarked for the project were stolen by scammers through a fraudulent email.
“What took more than seven years to save, somebody wiped out in just a few minutes,” said Johnny Blevins, who has served as Elkin Valley’s senior pastor since 1996. The church was founded in 1884 and is located in northwest North Carolina.
In early November, Blevins said the church received an email from Landmark Construction, the company overseeing the project, that included an invoice. Blevins said the church received a second email immediately after the first one that included payment instructions.
Fraudulent email
However, the second email — and the one through which the church submitted payment — was fraudulent.
Church officials didn’t discover that they had been the victims of a scam until about a week later when the construction company followed up to inquire about the payment, Blevins said.
“It was cloned to look like our builder’s email,” Blevins said. “We had been in communication with our builders through email and so forth, so it happened during the normal course of things. You just don’t think it can…
