BEC Scams Continue to Payout for Fraudsters

Fraudsters continue to double down om BEC scams, also known as business email compromise - or CEO fraud attacks. These involve attackers, who are often pretending to be the CEO or another high ranking executive, tricking someone in a company into giving them bank account, tax records or other useful information.

Scammers behind these Business Email Compromise (BEC) emails have added some tricks to increase their chances of success. In particular, they now try to engage victims in an email exchange to gradually build trust, instead of sending emails with wire transfer and/or payment instructions at the outset. It was reported that the FBI received over 350,000 complaints resulting in losses exceeding $2.7B in 2018 alone.

No organization or institution is immune. Reports of these attacks have occurred against companies ranging from Silicon Valley startups, technology companies, government agencies to local school districts.