Cat Writers' Association Inc

“The cwa treasury was attacked in late july. Cwa was targeted by scammers, using information most likely obtained from our public website pages about our officers, their email addresses, the recent conference and our sponsors. Someone posing as marci kladnik contacted our new treasurer, dawn white, requesting a series of wire transfers to cover "unpaid expense during the 23rd annual conference. "doing what she thought marci was asking her to do, she complied."this came to marci's attention at 9pm the night of friday august 4th when marci checked her email and found one from dawn with two wire transfer receipts attached to it. Marci immediately checked the cwa wells fargo bank account and saw four wire transfers had posted between july 25th and august 4th. The first one dated 07/26/2017 had bounced back into the cwa account, but three subsequent ones did go through to the tune of $54,192.09 in total. Marci was able to speak with someone in the wells fargo fraud department that same night and had the representative freeze the cwa account and also open a "wire transfer trace" case in hopes of recovering the monies that had gone out. That is all that could be done on a friday night. Marci called wells fargo again on saturday, but was unable to do anything more until monday. Monday and tuesday were spent filing fraud claims with wells fargo, the santa barbara county sheriff, and the fbi. Dawn and marci both changed their passwords and ran virus scans on their computers (both clean), but dawn continued to receive emails from the same email address requesting more funds. Marci ignored them but was able to pass on the new recipients' names and bank account information to wells fargo in hopes of tracking the scammers down. Marci's email account was not hacked but it was spoofed to make it appear the emails were coming from marci. We know this because when dawn replied to those emails they were redirected to a repllyon@gmail account. Luckily dawn sent the august 4th email to marci's other email account.definition: "email spoofing is the forgery of an email header so that the message appears to have originated from someone or somewhere other than the actual source. Email spoofing is a tactic used in phishing and spam campaigns because people are more likely to open an email when they think it has been sent by a legitimate source." both dawn and cwa were victimized. Cwa member, p.r specialist lea-ann germinder, told marci that this scam had targeted other non-profit organizations and that she herself had received similar email requests from her non-profit "president." the wife of marci's sheriff lieutenant friend told marci that one of their local cities was also recently targeted this way and sent money. Council and marci have been working hard to rectify cwa's current situation and are taking steps to ensure this can never happen again. Cwa updated the treasuer's standard operating procedures for more secure handling of large sums, put restrictions on the bank account, and also updated the bylaws. Cwa holds out hope that the funds will be recovered since claims were filed so quickly, but there is no guarantee.overall $2,123.63 was recovered on 9/27/2017, but that is all. Two lawyers have been contacted, one in california where marci lives and the other in texas because that is where cwa was "incorporated" and therefore falls under its judicial law. Marci has yet to hear back from the texas attorney but the california one suggests that dawn step down.dawn would like to continue as treasurer and council voted 6-to-1 to retain her. After reviewing the emails, cwa, wells fargo, and marci's local sheriff believe what happened was indeed a well-planned scam. (marci has not heard back from the fbi.)dawn states, "words cannot express how bad i feel about this incident. It's unfortunate that i was the victim of a crime, and even more unfortunate that cwa and its members were impacted as a result. The offenders behind this lack decency and morals”

“Yes, after the completion form 990 is submitted to the president for review and signature.”