Red Kite Community Housing has been conned out of nearly £1 million by sophisticated cyber scammers – leaving them “frustrated and angry”.

The housing association, which took over all of Wycombe District Council’s housing stock in 2011, has lost more than £932,000 after cyber criminals mimicked the domain and email details of known suppliers to Red Kite.

Through this they managed to recreate an email thread that misled those who were copied into the email that it was a genuine follow up to an existing conversation.

Police are still working to try and get the cash back.

The con, which saw the charitable organisation lose the cash at the end of August, has meant it has had its governance rating downgraded by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH).

In a heartfelt statement, Red Kite said they had to be honest about what had happened – saying the theft has been “absolutely galling”.

They said: “To be blunt, we were conned. A sophisticated cyber-crime which had a devastatingly simple result: we have lost money.

“More importantly, it is the money that our tenants work hard to entrust us with, and that is what makes it hurt even more. It is made worse by the fact that the amount is more than £932,000.

“As a community organisation that has built a track record of saving our residents over £33m in the first five years, and almost another £30m on our long-term business plan, it is absolutely galling to lose a £1, let alone the sum involved in this crime.

“What really angers us, though, is that these criminals have purposely targeted a charitable organisation.

“Our IT systems and teams detect and stop attempts to access information and steal data or money every day.

“What happened to us this time was different and it has brought home to us that you can never drop your guard for a moment, no matter how safe you think your systems are.

“We aren’t going to credit this con as being clever, we don’t want to glorify the criminals responsible. What they managed to do was to expose a weakness using sophistication and human nature to carry out the theft of this money.”

A regulatory judgement made public by the RSH this week highlights that Red Kite experienced “a significant financial loss as a result of a fraud due to a basic failure in its system of internal controls” – and urged them to make improvements.

Since the money was stolen, Red Kite says it has brought in an internationally-renowned cyber-specialist to look at what happened and find evidence that could be passed onto the police.

Red Kite added: “We are reassured that our systems were not compromised. However, that does nothing to ease the pain of the situation.

“Our teams have also been working to minimise the impact of this crime, being successful in renegotiating a financial deal that has saved us an additional £1.1 million.

“This doesn’t mean that we sit back and rest on our laurels, it just means that we are have been able to compensate for the loss and our residents will not suffer as a result.

“Thus, we can say with certainty that, as a result of this con, we will not be changing anything we currently support or that we undertake for our community, either now or in the future.”

Red Kite owns and manages around 6,500 homes across Wycombe – with plans to develop 371 more over the next three years.