MANSFIELD — The Mansfield City Schools board of education voted 4-0 Tuesday to approve a $10,000 insurance deductible payment after a scam cost the district around $54,000.
The district lost the money in 2024, during a period of tumult and turnover in the treasurer’s office.
“This was prior to my starting here,” Treasurer Tammy Hamilla said.
“We had received information from a vendor to change the deposit information on an ACH (automated clearinghouse) payment. That information turned out to be fraudulent,” she said.
Hamilla said the district was able to recover all but the $10,000 deductible from its liability insurance provider.
Hamilla said the error occurred while Jennifer Hedrick was serving as interim treasurer, but the mistake was made by another employee, who no longer works for the district.
Hedrick oversaw district finances for less than two months through an agreement between Mansfield City Schools and the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center (NCOESC), where she is the treasurer and CEO.
Mansfield City Schools was in the midst of its search for a permanent treasurer at the time.
“(Hedrick) was only here in an interim capacity trying to help the district get through until I was able to come on board,” said Hamilla, who joined the district in January 2025.
Hamilla said she implemented a treasurer’s office policy to prevent a similar error from occurring again after she started working in the district.
“The staff is not allowed to make any changes without actually contacting the vendor directly and speaking to somebody rather than answering an email,” she said.
A similar, though much more costly, error occurred at Mansfield City Hall in May 2025, when more than $748,000 was stolen as part of a phishing scheme.
In the scheme, the Mansfield finance department was scammed into sending a payment intended for a vendor to a fraudulent bank account.
Mansfield Finance Director Kelly Converse said someone impersonating the vendor contacted the finance department and requested they update the information used for electronic deposits. Believing the request to be authentic, an employee in the department processed the change.
Converse later told City Council the city would be able to recover the money.
During a cybersecurity talk at the Ohio State University Mansfield campus, one expert said cybersecurity threats are unavoidable.
“We’ll never get rid of it entirely, it’s like death,” said Kirk Herath, former chairman of the state government’s cybersecurity advisory board, CyberOhio.
“But we can certainly push it off in the future by some common practices, being healthy and taking care of yourself.”
Local government entities can access free cybersecurity training through the Ohio Cyber Range Institute.
