![]() Two major missed opportunities occurred on the Quincy side of the equation, according to PERAC, and the situation was exacerbated by delays in Quincy's board submitting annual statements and monthly cash books.įollowing city policy, the retirement board left McBirney's email address active after she left in an attempt to ensure remaining staff could access necessary information, despite industry practices and state guidance calling for deactivating the accounts of departed employees. ![]() One of those investment managers was Aberdeen, with which Quincy contracted in 2020 to invest $6 million. McBirney sent an email to People's United Bank, investment consultant Meketa Investment Group and her interim successor, Brigid Gaughan, with notice of her impending departure and requests for reports to be submitted to the bank, but PERAC investigators found the recipients did not circulate the information - which "would have been vital to preventing the fraudulent transaction" - to investment managers or other relevant parties. Quincy Retirement Board Executive Director Lisa McBirney announced in late 2020 she would leave her job at the end of that year. The Quincy Retirement Board reported in its 2021 annual report that it had 1,546 active members, 1,521 retired members and assets of about $918.6 million, according to PERAC. "All parties involved - Quincy, investment manager Aberdeen, its investment consultant Meketa Investment Group ('Meketa'), and custodial bank People's United Bank ('People's') - all of them statutory fiduciaries charged with protecting retirement funds, could have taken basic steps to prevent the fraud, to detect it sooner, or both," PERAC wrote. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. The panel that oversees 104 contributory retirement systems for Bay State public employees said the parties involved each share some degree of blame for the costly missteps, which prompted a new round of cybersecurity awareness notices and training and appears to have helped at least one other retirement board thwart a similar attempt. In a 48-page report published last week, the state Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission identified a suite of failures before and after the fraud, which went undetected by the Quincy Retirement Board or its partners for about eight months. Months after the Quincy Retirement Board's executive director left her role, someone used her still-active work email address in February 2021 to request and execute a $3.5 million transaction from investment manager Aberdeen. The retirement board for thousands of Quincy, Massachusetts, city employees, its investment partners and a bank all missed multiple warning signs or precautionary steps that could have prevented a bad actor from fraudulently transferring millions of dollars overseas, investigators concluded in a report that underlines the cybersecurity risks hanging over the public sector. ![]()
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