The Business Email Compromise scam continues to be an effective scam perpetrated against many companies, however recently one criminal operating this scam was convicted and sentenced to three years and five months in prison.  David Chukwuneke Adindu, a Nigerian citizen, was convicted of scamming companies out of more than 25 million dollars.
Generally this scam involves an email to the people who control payments at a targeted company. These people receive an email purportedly from the CEO, company attorney or even a vendor with which the company does business requesting funds be wired to a phony company or person.   At its essence, this scam is remarkably simple and relies more on simple psychology instead of sophisticated computer malware. Often the scammers will do significant research to not only learn the name of the key employees involved with payments within a company, but also will infiltrate the email accounts of company employees for a substantial period of time to learn the protocols and language used by the company in making payments.  The scammers also gather information from the company’s website and from social media accounts of its employees, all in an effort to adapt their message to seem more legitimate.
TIPS
In order to avoid this scam, companies should be particularly wary of requests for wire transfers made by email. Wire transfers are the preferred method of payment of scammers because of the impossibility of getting the money back once it has been sent.  Verification protocols for wire transfers and other bill payments should be instituted including, dual factor authentication when appropriate. Companies should also consider the amount of information that is available about them and their employees that can be used by scammers to perpetrate this crime.  They also should have strict rules regarding company information included on employee social media accounts that can be exploited for “spear phishing” emails which play a large part in this scam. Finally, employees should be specifically educated about this scam in order to be on the lookout for it.
Companies should also be protective of personal information such as W-2s and should not provide it electronically unless they have confirmed that the request for the documentation is legitimate.