03 May Scammers pose as company execs in wire transfer spam campaign
Innocent-looking payment requests could result in financial loss for companies. Are your employees being targeted with fraudulent emails?
BE AWARE
Notice the Signs
We have recently seen a spam campiagn involving fake wire transfer request emails. The purpose of this type of email is very simple – to get the recipient to process a payment for non-existent goods or services by way of a wire or credit transfer.
- The scammers send an email to a target recipient, usually pretending to be from the CEO or a senior executive of an organisation.
- The scammers will usually send the fake wire transfer emails to employees working in the finance department of a company, as those employees will have the ability to action payment requests.
- Scammers will register domains very similar to the target domain.
For example: if a scammer was targeting a user at exampledomain.co.uk they might register the domain exaampledomain.co.uk
So for example, you might receive an email sent to you at name@exampledomain.co.uk from CEO@exaampledomain.co.uk
- The reason for this is that when a recipient replies to the email, the scammer hopes that they might not notice the slight difference in the domain and think it’s from a trusted sender.
WHAT TO DO NEXT
Key Points
If you receive a wire transfer request that seems out of the ordinary, take note of the following:
- Always check that the sender is who they say they are.
- Ask yourself: is it normal procedure for your CEO to decide that you’re the best (or only) person to help in that situation?
- Check the email headers to see where the email has originated from.
- If you have any suspicions about an email requesting a wire transfer, investigate it further before proceeding with the payment request.
Have a read of The Little Book of Big Scams
It offers top tips and fraud prevention advice to safeguard your business against fraudulent acts whilst complying with the law and relevant regulations.