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American company lost $100M to email fraud, U.S. says
- thesis 11y agoI wonder why the company isn't named? Does the US even care about all the money being sent to my long lost relative in Nigeria or only when a big company loses money?
- 55555 11y agoNo, they don't. Citizens and small businesses lose tons to VAF (victim assisted fraud) and are on their own.
- tacos 11y agoIt's actually not that uncommon. The scam can be as simple as: "please wire money to XXX" sent to the right underling from his boss on a weekend. All data mined from LinkedIn. Personally aware of multiple $10-20MM scams. The recovery here seems high. I've heard much worse.
- eitally 11y agoFor all I know, they're talking about my previous employer (Sanmina). In electronics manufacturing, the economy is truly global and we had on average about 6,000 active suppliers at any point in time. It would have been (and was) trivial for someone to spoof a supplier's email and change bank routing information or send an illegitimate invoice. If the Accounts Payable and plant + corporate controllers aren't paying attention and reconciling invoices to orders, things like this will happen. I feel bad for companies that fall for it, but at large publicly traded companies there's really no excuse. This is easily avoidable through process diligence & training.
- Pitarou 11y agoTotally agree. The medium has changed, but this kind of fraud is as old as the hills, and there are long established procedures designed to prevent it. It's the very first thing they teach in Business Accounting 101.
- chrischen 11y agoEmail is an amazingly insecure protocol that we rely on. Relatively hard to verify senders, complex cumbersome protocol, by default most clients send the whole thread back in a reply.
- 55555 11y agoMust be nice to be a protected multinational. Small businesses that fall for these scams are just told to fill out a complaint form with the FBI. They dont get their money back.
- pcurve 11y agoI think this happens more than most IT folks here would believe, especially at small to medium businesses that have suppliers overseas. Something similar happened to my brother's employer, and they lost $100k because an employee simply didn't double check the routing number. Most small businesses are run by non-tech savvy people, employing relatively non-tech savvy people. What people on this board consider common sense security procedures aren't so common sense to all.