- Above chart found @: FBI
"Today, federal authorities - including the Department of Justice and the FBI - announced a major coordinated law enforcement effort to disrupt international business e-mail compromise (BEC) schemes that are designed to intercept and hijack wire transfers from businesses and individuals.
Awareness of BEC Schemes Can Safeguard Your Business
BEC schemes continue to evolve as criminals come up with new and inventive ways to scam businesses.
Here are the most current and frequent BEC scenarios identified by the FBI:
- Business Executive: Criminals spoof or compromise e-mail accounts of high-level business executives, including chief information officers and chief financial officers, which result in the processing of a wire transfer to a fraudulent account
- Real Estate Transactions: Criminals impersonate sellers, realtors, title companies, or law firms during a real estate transaction to ask the home buyer for funds to be sent to a fraudulent account.
- Data and W-2 Theft: Criminals, using a compromised business executive's e-mail account, send fraudulent requests for W-2 information or other personally identifiable information to an entity in an organization that routinely maintains that sort of information
- Supply Chain: Criminals send fraudulent requests to redirect funds during a pending business deal, transaction, or invoice payment to an account controlled by a money mule or bad actor (the role of money mules, witting or unwitting, in BEC schemes is very important - they are used to receive the stolen money and then transfer the funds as directed by the fraudsters.)
- Law Firms: Criminals find out about trust accounts or litigation and impersonate a law firm client to change the recipient bank information to a fraudulent account.
If you think you may have been victimized in a BEC scheme, please file a complaint with the IC3. the more information law enforcement has on these scams, the better equipped we'll be to combat them.
And to further educate yourself on BEC schemes to help protect your business, read more how BEC schemes work and how you can avoid being victimized. You can also take a look at this IC3 public service announcement on BEC schemes.
