What happened
Dublin Zoo was the victim of an invoice redirection fraud in 2017 in which criminals intercepted genuine supplier invoices and had payments totaling roughly €500,000 sent to accounts they controlled. The zoo reported the matter to Gardaí at Cabra Garda Station, which referred it to the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau, and most of the money was recovered with the assistance of financial institutions. The zoo said no customer data was compromised.
How the deception worked
The scheme substituted the destination account on invoices the zoo already expected to pay, so nothing about the amount, the supplier name or the timing looked unusual. Criminals obtained or replicated genuine invoices and presented altered bank details as a routine change of the supplier's account, communicated by email or phone. Finance staff updated the payment details and released the payments in the ordinary run. Gardaí publicly warned after the case that no business should change a supplier's bank account number on the basis of a call or email without verifying the change with a known contact at the supplier, which is precisely the control gap the fraud exploited.
AI involvement · No AI reported
No AI or synthetic media reported.
The control that would have caught it· our reading, not a claim from the sources
Treat supplier bank-detail changes as a security event requiring verification with a known contact using previously held numbers, and reconcile with suppliers promptly so a diversion is caught while funds are still recoverable.
Sources (1)
This entry summarises public reporting. It is not a legal finding, and details can change as investigations conclude. Found an error? Send a correction.