Concerns of phishing attacks arose late last week when an applicant for a city of Dallas permit received an email that was purportedly signed by the city planning director asking for thousands of dollars for application review fees, according to an email obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
The message, sent from [email protected], has characteristics of a phishing email, including the purported email signature of Emily Liu, director of the planning and development department.
The email asks the applicant, who is seeking to renew a specific use permit, to wire nearly $7,000. It includes a breakdown of costs related to compliance evaluations and record keeping to justify the payment.
Fees are usually paid on the city’s website or in person, and emails from the department have a dallas.gov address.
Dallas unveiled new permitting software earlier this month, putting the review of all applications related to permits, inspections, engineering, planning and platting on a single platform.
A city spokesperson told The News the phishing email was not connecting to a hacking incident.
The permitting department sent out approximately 16,000 emails to warn people and companies ed with the office about the phishing attempt.
A similar attack in March targeted the planning department in Bernalillo County, N.M. s also received emails requesting wire transfers. The emails had addresses ending in usa.com, similar to the one in Dallas.
It is unclear how the sender of the phishing email got the information. In Bernalillo County, scammers were believed to have obtained information from publicly available meeting agendas. It is not clear whether a similar tactic was used in Dallas.
Correction, 12:09 p.m., May 29, 2025: A recent phishing email sent to some people seeking permits from the city of Dallas has not been linked to the city’s new permitting software, DallasNow, according to city spokesperson Rick Ericson. A previous version of this story said the phishing emails had raised concerns about the integrity of the platform.
Clarification, 12:09 p.m., May 29, 2025: A phishing email sent to some people seeking permits from the city of Dallas included an email signature purported to be that of Planning Director Emily Liu, but Liu did not actually sign the email. An earlier version of this story was unclear in its second reference to the signature.