Thursday, June 6, 2019

Business Email Compromise

Occasionally, I will be posting information on various crime types for law enforcement analyst awareness. Business Email Compromise (BEC) came to my attention when I worked as an Investigative Analyst in a federal law enforcement agency. It is a widespread scam that can be combatted by educating businesses.

"BEC, also known as cyber-enabled financial fraud, is a sophisticated scam that often targets employees with access to company finances and trick them—using a variety of methods like social engineering and computer intrusions—into making wire transfers to bank accounts thought to belong to trusted partners but instead belong to accounts controlled by the criminals themselves."

"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: Criminal 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
  • 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."


Read more at:
How BEC scams became 2017’s most lucrative crime
International Business E-Mail Compromise Takedown
FBI Report: Global BEC Losses Exceeded US$12 Billion in 2018

No comments:

Post a Comment