Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill on Thursday that exempts ID numbers and other unique alphanumeric codes used by public agencies to identify vendors and contractors from public disclosure under the California Public Records Act.
The legislation, SB 441 from Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Solano, passed the legislature months after a purported criminal scheme uncovered last spring that attempted to intercept payments sent by the city of Dixon to a vendor.
"This comes from the fact that a small city in my district — and it's not the only one in the state — was the victim of an attempt to divert $1.3 million through an automatic payment system," Wolk said as the bill passed the assembly, referring to the incident that targeted Dixon.
According to The Reporter newspaper in Vacaville, Dixon officials uncovered the fraud scheme in early March via a phishing email sent to city staff "including an attached letter pretending to be on the vendor’s letterhead" that included the vendor's ID number and fraudulent change instructions for the payment. The criminal actors likely found the vendor ID number through a simple Internet search, officials said. Funds were recovered before the transaction was finished, the newspaper reported.
