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I would think a simple 2nd factor check, by phone to the actual vendor would have prevented this. For such large amounts the time involved would be worth it
by kirykl 10y ago
I would think a simple 2nd factor check, by phone to the actual vendor would have prevented this. For such large amounts the time involved would be worth it
- anovikov 10y agoQuite likely people on the other side (employees of the victim companies) collaborated with him and got their share...
- kbart 10y agoTry to call international company with thousands of workers and get somebody who knows anything on phone. Also, most workers simply don't care for a tiny chance of scam, it's not their money after all.
- pythonaut_16 10y agoSeems like a reasonable requirement as part of any large deal like this. Even if each party pays someone 200k a year solely to sit in an office and make calls verifying large invoices you're still talking about a small amount compared to the size of these contracts.
- manquer 10y agoI would think that vendors with large enough contracts will be more than happy to jump through any hoops if required.
- vidarh 10y agoI've worked for companies in the past where no money would ever be paid out to anyone but government (tax bills etc.) without the party sending them the invoice having a valid purchase order number that referred to a pre-agreed supplier record that specified tha company name and address and the bank account to send it to. It was annoying at times, but it also meant their accounts department could match every single expense to a specific contract or pre-agreed authorisation, complete with who (on their end) had made the request and who had signed off the request. Even if you don't do that for everything, even just doing that for everything above a certain amount would make such fraud a lot harder.
- notahacker 10y agoA phone check can solve a lot when you've got a single point of contact at a company and they know all its subdivisions and are on first name terms with the accounts receivables department(s). That's not likely to be the case for a large multinational with multiple divisions selling multiple products to different divisions of the client, especially assuming the scammers have socially engineered their way to having enough information on existing contracts and invoices to be able to plausibly adapt them for their own purposes.