A new type of wire fraud is in town – Business Email Compromise.
Simply put, business email compromise involves a criminal and/or hacker who impersonates a corporate executive. They send out a company-wide email trying to convince them to wire money to an account to pay a debt or fulfill a purchase order. Once the money is wired, it’s really difficult to track or get back.
This scheme, along with many scheme variations, have heavily affected numerous businesses resulting in paychecks being rerouted to offshore accounts. Some businesses have even had to declare bankruptcy!
Companies are recommended to educate their employees on cybersecurity and put protocols in place that require multiple steps before any funds can be wired.
Read more about the business email compromise scheme here.