by April Scheinoha
Reporter
The Pennington County Board held an emergency meeting Tuesday, April 2 to close a checking account used by the Pennington County Human Services Department. Law enforcement is investigating after it learned about an issue with the account, which was referred to as the department’s social welfare account.
During the meeting, Human Services Director Julie Sjostrand said the matter was brought to her attention by Northern State Bank and law enforcement. Jon Bushy, representing Northern State Bank, and Sheriff Seth Vettleson attended the meeting, which was called about two hours earlier.
Sjostrand told commissioners there would be immediate harm to the checking account if it weren’t closed immediately. Northern State Bank informed Sjostrand that she was unable to close the account on her own. Instead, County Board needed to approve the closure.
After the meeting, The Times asked Sjostrand if a cyberattack led to the issue or someone was using the account for their own purposes. Sjostrand declined to comment, saying the matter remains under investigation. She said she learned about the issue within the past week and no Human Services Department clients have been affected.
Commissioners have authorized Sjostrand to open another account for the same purposes but with another account number.
Sjostrand expected that the Human Services Department would be looking at its ledger the next day and determining which checks from the now-closed account hadn’t yet been cashed. She said staff have already talked to Social Security, which apparently deposits checks into that account.