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One of Australia's Richest Men Lost $1 Million To Email Scam (bloomberg.com)
Kaye Wiggins, reporting for Bloomberg: The multi-millionaire founder of Twynam Agricultural Group lost $1 million in an email fraud, a London court heard Thursday. The British man who facilitated the theft says he's a victim too. John Kahlbetzer, who is on the Forbes list of the 50 richest Australians, lost the money when fraudsters tricked the administrator of his personal finances into transferring it to them, his court papers say. Fraudsters emailed Christine Campbell, pretending to be the 87-year-old and asking her to pay $1 million to an account held by a British man, David Aldridge, which she did. Kahlbetzer is suing Aldridge to recover the funds, but Aldridge says he was being "unwittingly used" and was himself the victim of a fraud involving a woman he met online and believed he was in a loving relationship with. Email frauds where companies' staff are tricked into transferring money are a growing problem. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show "business email compromise" cases, where criminals ask company officials to transfer funds, have cost more than $3 billion since 2015.
Where I work, we are required to take a the Kevin Mitnick online security training course every year.
It is really basic. How to look at an email and detect whether or not it is a scam. Don't click on shady links. Beware of PDF and Word, etc. For many of us, it feels like a waste of time as we are reminded of common-sense stuff that we automatically do anyway.
But.....the fact is....these scams work, and they hit businesses hard again and again. It totally makes sense for businesses to require their employees to do this every year, because among any large group of employees there is always going to be someone who needs to hear it.