Rockville Volunteer Fire Department seeks donations after ambulance fund scam

Department pursuing $120,000 fundraising goal

May 21, 2024 8:38 p.m.

Editor’s note: This story, originally published at 4:38 p.m. May 21, was updated at 2:40 p.m. May 22 to add comments from Rockville Volunteer Fire Department President Eric Bernard.

The Rockville Volunteer Fire Department (RVFD) is seeking donations after online scammers stole $220,000 in late April, which was intended as a down payment for two new ambulances.

The department successfully recovered about half the stolen funds in the immediate aftermath of the scam but said in a May 14 Facebook post that it is “unlikely to recover the remaining $120,000.”

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To offset the loss of funds, the department has launched a multi-pronged fundraising campaign. It accepts support for its Ambulance Recovery Fund via the “Donate” tab on its website and a verified GoFundMe campaign launched May 14. As of Tuesday afternoon, the GoFundMe push has raised a little more than $5,200–about 4.4% of the $120,000 goal–through 52 donations.

“So far, we have already raised several thousand dollars via donations on our website and the authorized GoFundMe,” President Eric Bernard said in an email to MoCo360 on Tuesday evening.

He added the department will soon “announce several in-person community fundraisers.”

“We are incredibly grateful to the community we serve for rallying around us these past few weeks and look forward to rolling these ambulances out as soon as possible,” Bernard said.

The department became aware of the scam during the week of April 28, according to Bernard.

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“Last week, we learned of a hack that we understand targeted us, along with multiple fire, rescue and EMS departments–unfortunately, due to its sophistication, we were one of its victims,” Bernard wrote May 7 in an email to MoCo360. “Despite our safeguards, we fell short–and an unknown actor scammed us while we were in the process of buying two new ambulances to better serve Rockville.”

On May 9, the department released a statement detailing the incident on its website, which stated the scammers were “impersonating a vendor RVFD has been working with.” The statement said the department immediately reported the scam to Montgomery County police, the U.S. Secret Service and FBI, and also contacted “allies within [the] Montgomery County government.”

“Thanks to both our quick reaction and our bank’s assistance, we were able to recover half of what was stolen,” the department wrote on its GoFundMe page.

Despite the $120,000 lost in the scam, the department said its ambulance purchase is not in jeopardy.

“Thanks to decades of generosity from the community RVFD serves, we remain in a strong financial position to both complete this purchase and to continue operations as normal,” the department wrote in its May 9 statement.

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The statement also said the department “is further implementing even more safeguards to ensure that we remain at the forefront of fighting identity theft and preventing any further cyber crime attacks.”

The department operates four stations and has 240 volunteer members, according to its website. It handles emergency calls for an area containing approximately 250,000 residents and provides fire and rescue assistance in other parts of the county.

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