Guilford County warns of phishing email targeting rezoning cases

A phishing email that looked like a Guilford County Planning Board notice put rezoning applicants, property owners and businesses at risk of more than a fake bill. County officials warned that the message could also carry malware, turning a routine-looking land-use email into a possible doorway to stolen data, infected computers and delayed projects.

The scam was crafted to feel legitimate. It used the name of James Donnelly, who chairs the Guilford County Planning Board, and framed itself as a normal planning email tied to a property rezoning request. The message included an invoice and pushed the recipient to click for payment details, a tactic aimed squarely at people already waiting on county action. Guilford County said the phishing email targeted residents and businesses currently involved in rezoning matters, making it especially believable to anyone with an active case.

The biggest giveaway was the sender address. Guilford County said the fake message came from guilfordcountync.gov@usa.com, not the county’s official guilfordcountync.gov address. The county’s advice was blunt: do not click the attachment, report the email as phishing to your email provider and delete it. That matters because an unexpected invoice tied to a rezoning file could tempt a property owner or contractor to move quickly before checking the source.

The timing made the scam even more effective. Guilford County is already in the middle of a tense public conversation about property values, taxes and reappraisals. The county says reappraisals are required by North Carolina law at least every eight years, and its 2026 values took effect Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. Tax bills will reflect those values in July 2026, while the 2026 tax rates will not be set until June. WFMY reported that property owners could appeal their values until May 15, 2026, and that the earlier reappraisal was driven by a large gap between 2022 assessed values and market sales.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center has warned that criminals nationwide are impersonating city and county planning and zoning officials in phishing emails for fraudulent permit fees. The bureau says scammers often use publicly available permit information, including property addresses and zoning application numbers, and may steer victims toward wire transfers, peer-to-peer apps or cryptocurrency. For Guilford County residents and businesses, the lesson was immediate: any surprise invoice tied to a rezoning case should be treated as suspicious until it is confirmed through trusted county contact information, not the email itself.