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New Scams to Worry About
Aug 18, 2015
Received an email from our IT guys today, where they're warning about a new scam.
It involves scammers posing as CEO's or higher ups in a company, and stating that they're authorizing monetary transfer requests into whatever accounts they have set up for themselves. The emailed request may look and read like any other official funds transfer request--remember scammers may have intercepted a prior email or paper copy of some intercompany correspondence, or simply have a pretty standard corporate template they use.
What makes the scam even more convincing, is that they will also set up fake domains to fool the unsuspecting victim. Let's say you company's domain is "awesomeco.com" Well, the scammers will simply create a domain, "awessomeco.com" and send an email coming from an address such as "ceo@awessome.com" instructing you to transfer moneys into their account. Of course, you being a dutiful and efficient employee, you think nothing of it (it's from the CEO, after all!) and initiate the transfer.
By the time you realize there was an extra "s" on the scammer's email address, that money and account are gone---let's just hope your job is not!!
Another variation we'd heard was that scammers are emailing fake past due invoices from vendors that you do business with, demanding immediate payment via credit card or wire transfers, threatening to stop shipping any additional orders to your company. Many unorganized victims have fallen to that one as well.
You may think this doesn't pertain to you, but if you work in A/P or have your own business, better keep your eyes open. It is very easy to not notice that extra "s" or to tell yourself, "I better send the payment--I need that order next week!" and just send the money--especially if the amounts are low enough to "fly below your radar."
These guys operate on volume...they know that if they ask you to send them $20,000 you're going to double and triple check...you may not be so diligent with sending $500 or $600 just to "get them out of your hair."
If they can trick the big companies into sending money, what makes you think they can't do the same to you?
Category: Bookkeeping
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