The FBI has issued an alert about email scams targeting people and businesses that have been reported in all 50 states and 79 countries, with a majority of stolen funds going to banks in China.
The agency distinguishes between schemes that target business, or business email compromise scams, and those targeting individuals, or email account compromise scams. Frauds perpetrated against businesses accounted for $1.2 billion in losses worldwide between October 2013 and August 2015, according to the FBI and international law enforcement. The FBI reported that fraud against individuals in the U.S. accounted for $700,000 in the second quarter of 2015.
In its Thursday release, the FBI said scammers had developed a new method for fraudulently extracting money from businesses. The scammers have been calling companies purporting to be attorneys or representatives of law firms handling time-sensitive matters for the company and pressuring them “to act quickly or secretly” in wiring funds over. The contact can be made via phone or email.
This is the latest tactic in the development of business email fraud. The FBI issued an alert in January warning of the activity, which is based on gaining access to a single person’s email account and finding a contact in that account who will respond favorably to a request to wire money. If the hackers access a vendor account, the FBI explained, they may use the account to ask a business to wire funds for a legitimate invoice payment to an alternate, fraudulent account. If they hack a company executive, they may email another employee within the company who is responsible for processing payments asking that employee to send money to a given bank account.
Instances of fraud perpetrated against individuals work in a similar manner, with hackers generally targeting attorneys, real estate agents, and financial service representatives to obtain client lists. In cases of individual fraud, the hackers will often have the money wired to an intermediary “mule” in the U.S. before moving it to its final destination, usually in Asia. Mules, the FBI reports, “may be victims of employment scams, romance scams, or personal loan scams.”
The FBI advises that the best way to prevent fraud is to protect access to email accounts by enabling two-step verification, which involves entering a message that an email provider sends to a user’s phone when that user attempts to log in.
Individuals should not wire money to strangers on the phone, the FBI said. The bureau further suggests questioning “any changes to wire transfer instructions” and “contacting the associated parties through a known avenue.”
