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UNION, Mo. (First Alert 4) - A scammer impersonating a Franklin County government employee attempted to get a Franklin County company to pay a permit fee through a fraudulent email, according to the company's president.

Mark Frankenberg is president of BFA Inc., a civil engineering firm in Washington, Missouri. He said an employee received the email, which was then forwarded to him.

 It came to him, and then it was sent up to me, and I got to looking and something ain't right here,  Frankenberg said.

The email claimed to be from the Franklin County Planning and Zoning Department in Union. Frankenberg said he found several red flags.

 The red flags just kept adding up,  he said.

Red flags in the email

Frankenberg told First Alert 4 that the county's logo is usually not used directly in an email, only in attachments. He also said no one named Alex Goodburn works for the Planning and Zoning Department. The email requested that $4,800 be wired.

 48-hundred, the survey didn't even cost that much. So, it's ridiculous to assume that the fees are going to be every bit of the cost of the survey,  Frankenberg said.

The fee BFA actually owed was $250.

Nichole Zielke is director of the Franklin County planning department. This is believed to be the first reported case of a government impersonation scam in the St. Louis region.

 No, I wouldn't have thought a county government would have been important enough to impersonate,  Zielke said.

How the scam was built

It appears the scammer searched through online documents from a September 29 county commission meeting to gather details to make the email appear legitimate. The fraud attempt failed.

 Obviously, if they're trying to hit people for thousands of dollars above and beyond what the application fees would be, then I'm sure the more you get of them, I'm sure they're not doing too bad if they're actually getting people paying them,  Zielke said.

This type of government impersonation scam has been reported in at least seven states, including Missouri. The FBI said there was an 87% incre

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