"This is not just a one-off thing, this is a highly organised, highly sophisticated crime," David Spearritt, an advisor to Queensland's Local Government Finance Officers said.

"There is nothing unique to Queensland's local government here. It could be operating anywhere there are large public tender contracts.

"I just think the alarm bells need to be raised," he said.

Mr Spearritt warned the scam could be in place in other states.

"The fraud is quite ingrained in public tenders, but other states have public tenders," he said. "Other levels of government have public tenders, big corporates have public tenders."

The office of New South Wales' Local Government Minister Paul O'Toole has been advised of the scams.

As the fallout from the successful scamming of $450,000 from Brisbane City Council grows; it has now been confirmed that Logan, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Bundaberg and Central Highlands councils have also been targeted.

Brisbane's regular payments to its garbage collection contracts were targeted by the fraudsters, because tender documents are publicly available.

Waste contractor Cleanaway and road contractor Fulton Hogan, which runs 13 asphalt plants to resurface roads and a quarry in Brisbane, have been hit by the Brisbane scam.

Both businesses operate in other states of Australia.

Mr Spearritt, director of the Orion Consulting Network which provides advice to Queensland's councils, on Thursday warned Australian Federal Police should be investigating what he described as "very serious organised crime."

"It looks like these people do their homework. They get the tender documents, wait and see who wins the tender, check the scheduled dates of payments," he said.

"And then, the day before payments, try to change to bank account, before the payment gets made."

He said he had been told six councils throughout Queensland had been targeted – five unsuccessfully - by similar scams.

He said several state authorities in Queensland may also have been affected.

"The Queensland Audit Office seems to be implying it is also affecting several state agencies," Mr Spearritt said. "So it is large organisations that are being targeted."

Scammers have used the fake name "Brad Johnson – account manager" to try to defraud regular and expensive cleaning, garbage and road contracts at up to six Queensland councils.

Mr Spearitt also warned the frauds appeared to be getting through bank security safeguard systems which require "100 points of identification" to set up bank accounts.

"So I'm really questioning what is happening with the banks' internal checks," he said.

"And when they are alerted that it is a fraudulent transaction why aren't they able to trace who owns those accounts."

Queensland Audit Office's audit manager Denis Byram is now providing this advice to large organisations throughout Queensland to recognise the scam.

How the scam hit

Step 1

A person has previously phoned to say that "their account manager details have changed."

Step 2

"Contact is made requesting a change in bank account details, usually by email. The name 'Brad Johnson' has been used to send the email as the 'accounts manager' on multiple occasions."

Step 3

"The letter is accompanied by a legitimate looking deposit slip. There are errors on the deposit slip including;

-          a. The acknowledgement details containing a different bank name. For example it will be an NAB deposit slip but the acknowledgement will say; " I acknowledge that the deposit is subject to Westpac's interest;";

-          b. The reference/serial number may be 100025."

Queensland's Local Government Association said they had passed on warnings from the Queensland Audit Office about the scams to their councils.

It did not believe the issue was widespread enough to contact all councils to determine how many had been hit by the scam, an LGAQ spokesman said.

Queensland Police's fraud squad did not reply to questions from Fairfax Media on Thursday.

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