Do you receive any payment instructions from your supervisor or any vendor through email?
If you answered yes and/or maybe, you are at risk for the latest fraud scheme. Fraudsters have been very successful in impersonating superiors, peers and vendors to get businesses to send them
fraudulent wire transfers and wire transfer payments. They have even stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. The fraudsters either compromise known parties emails or create similar looking emails (e.g., johnsmo@example.com vs. johnsmo @examp1e.com). The fraudster then requests payments be made and/or gives you new account numbers for any future payments. These email requests may look like regular correspondence between you and another party or even be inserted into an on-going conversation. The email requests will often have a sense of urgency, playing on your desire to help your manager or long-time trading partner.
To protect your company’s and/or your personal assets:
- Always verify requests for wire transfers or ACH payments received through email. Perform call backs to other parties on known numbers to validate all requests received through email.
- Always verify requests to send future payments to a new account.
- Match requests with known invoices.
- Dont be afraid to ask a question. A one-minute phone call is all it takes to protect your assets.
