A businessman was on the verge of losing $6 million to hackers, but a single word prevented his fortune from slipping into the hands of hackers and being lost forever.
HOW MISSPELLING OF ONE WORD SAVED A MAN HIS $6 MILLIONS FROM CYBER CRIMINALS
When cybercriminals succeeded to steal the email account of the other party engaged in the deal, the victim was in the last stages of a multi-million dollar property deal. The bank account information was then updated to their own. If the money had been sent, recovering it would be tough.
Stacey, a junior banker at National Australia Bank NAB, is credited with saving his money. She was able to halt the transaction after seeing an error in one word of the email exchange. In one of the correspondence emails, Stacy observed that the term "group" was misspelt, and it was typed as "gruop" instead. When she noticed the error, she became frightened and began an investigation, discovering that the situation was minutes away from disaster.
BEC scams, or business email compromise scams, are a type of Thai form of attack. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, these scams have increased in the last three years and more.
The victim went to school with the individual from whom he was purchasing the property and had great faith in him.
The other party was a long-time buddy who he could completely trust. Everything was going fine until the day before the settlement, when he received another email from his friend claiming that he was having issues with his account and that he would want to receive the monies in his Singapore account.
The victim didn't think twice about it at the time, but when he told his bank that he wanted to transfer money to another bank account in Singapore in order to purchase a home in Australia, they began to have doubts. The bank, however, took a close look at the email trail as a precaution, and it was here that Stacey discovered some red flags. Not only was the term "group" misspelt, but she also noted that the other party sent each email with a different greeting, such as "hi" and "hello." She also noted that the communications' general tone had changed.
How did she notice him? Scam of Business Email Compromise
“When the client requested to make this transfer, all seemed pretty normal,” Stacey recalled. “It was pretty uniform with other transfers he had done in the past and went to a regular recipient. But as she was reading through some of the communication emails between the client and the seller, she noticed a few changes along the email communication. She first noticed that the word ‘group’ was misspelled as ‘gruop’ and the tone in some of the greetings was slightly different. She also doubted when an offshore account was included and the payment date had been moved earlier. Then she called the seller/ intended recipient of the funds, he confirmed that he had never changed the account and has no account in Singapore and found out that his emails had been compromised.
“Thank God,” Victim said. “It would be a very traumatic experience to lose that amount of money.
Scams using business email compromise are on the rise, and they're difficult to spot.
When the intended receiver contacts the sender to inquire about their funds, it will become clear that they have been duped.
The cybersecurity expert warns that anyone making a major transaction should "double- and triple-check."
Because if you send money and it outside the bank's control, it might be extremely difficult to recover funds from an offshore account.
Because the victim consented to the transaction of their own free will, they will bear the brunt of the loss.
Make repeated phone calls to all parties involved and confirm account details via email and verbally via phone or video call. Another concerning tendency is that the perpetrators are well-resourced and sophisticated individuals. They are highly sophisticated criminal organisations with vast financial resources. These are the same people who are involved in drug and human trafficking.
Because these scams are all digital, you can scam a huge number of victims at a very low cost.
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