Montclair township warns of fraudulent planning board emails
Montclair township stresses that these emails are entirely fraudulent, as the planning department will never request payment via wire transfer.
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Montclair Township officials are issuing an urgent warning to local residents and businesses regarding a sophisticated email scam falsely claiming to be from municipal development departments.
The fraudulent scheme specifically targets applicants with active matters before the Montclair planning board or board of adjustment. Authorities believe the scammers are harvesting target names and contact information directly from publicly available meeting agendas and official town documents.
The scam operations utilize a variety of spoofed sender addresses designed to look like official township communications. The fraudulent messages include fake invoices and demand immediate payment for planning board-related matters, specifically instructing victims to submit payments via wire transfer.
Montclair township stresses that these emails are entirely fraudulent, as the planning department will never request payment via wire transfer.
Officials urge anyone who receives a suspicious message matching this description to avoid interacting with it entirely. Do not reply to the message, click any links, or open any attachments. Furthermore, do not share any personally identifiable information, financial details, or other sensitive data.
Instead, residents should forward the message—as an attachment, if possible—directly to the township at info@montclairnjusa.org so the municipality can investigate. Recipients should also report the message as phishing using their email provider's built-in reporting feature, such as “Report phishing” in Gmail or “Report > Phishing” in Outlook, and then delete the message.
Anyone who has already sent a payment in response to one of these fraudulent emails should take immediate action. Victims are instructed to contact the Montclair Police Department at (973)-744-1234 to file a local report, and additionally file a cybercrime complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.
