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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.
Somebody attempted this with an organization for which I administrate a website. They got the Treasurer's email from the site and spoofed the President's email address, asking for the current account balances. Fortunately, the Treasurer wrote to the group's secretary and asked her to handle the request. When she called the President about it, he said he had no idea what she was talking about. Scam never sleeps.
Everyone should be completely careful! https://williamreview.com/grap...
http://williamreview.com/
Mr. Kahlbetzer's net worth is estimated to be between 750 million USD and 950 million meaning this loss represents 0.105% to 0.133% of his total wealth.
It's time we start holding the receiving banks accountable for these scams. Roll back the transactions via SWIFT whether they were authorized or not. Stop caring if the receiving back reports no money in target account. The money for the fraudulent transactions will still be recovered from the interchanges. The banks that got them will receive less money than expected the next time currency has to follow the transaction.
Sounds like whoever he outsourced his financial management to is in trouble...
It's interesting that so many of these scams involve massive wire transfers of funds. Wire transfers aren't too common for individuals in the US, but from what I understand it's the equivalent of handing over a bag of cash to the recipient. If the funds are taken out of the account, there's no way to get it back. Why would anyone, businesses included, rely on such an irrevocable form of payment? I can understand shady international payments to Cayman Islands bank accounts or spy agencies moving money around secretly, but normal everyday transactions? Why no safeguards?
ae911truth dot org
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.
"Criminal": I can haz moneys?
Company: Sure, thanks for asking. Here's a million bucks.
Criminal: Thanks!
Where's the problem? If the company / individual didn't want to send money, they didn't have to. Just because you get an email asking for money doesn't mean you HAVE to do it!
It won't hurt him much, and it's a small step in the opposite direction of the general trend of all money being concentrated in the hand of the few.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Man worth $95 million loses 1% of wealth to scam.
It is high time the Government investigate if there is a pattern of getting instruction through email and transferring money without asking questions to allow the rich guy deniability. Scenario like this: Rich guy hires goons to do stuff, sends email to financial advisor cryptically pay x $ to account Y. Financial advisor deliberately avoids getting any written instruction, phone calls, oral verification. Even if the police catch the perps, sniff up the money trail of the goons, it would stop at this "financial advisor". Who would again claim victim of fraud.
They should find ALL the money transfers by that accountant, and see if any of it can be tied to funding illegal activity.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why is he suing the recipient of the funds, and not the dude who negligently sent the money in the first place?
Aldridge claims he was the victim of a separate scam. How is that the Aussie's problem? Aldridge's false romance has nothing to do with the theft of money from Twynam Agricultural Group. He might as well try to deflect the lawsuit by wailing that he has a broken toe, so the theft isn't his fault.
The word is stupidity.
I am appalled that the administrator did this without verifying anything. The extent to which people who control this kind of thing are completely oblivious to known forms of social engineering is really troubling .. no validation of email to a known value, no confirmation through a known point of contact ... just "here's your million".
So, either this guy is the habit of transferring around large sums of money with just a quick email, or the person who blindly transferred it is an idiot.
You can't be responsible for that much money and be so utterly clueless about basic security.
Well, clearly, you can.
But damn if this isn't a fairly elaborate scheme which would require some planning to get in place. That's some pretty fancy spear phishing and scamming there.
A friend of mine made the unfortunate mistake of having an Internet girlfriend whom he never met in person, never heard on the phone or seen via Skype, and sending her $5,000 (his life savings) to her with the promise that he would get his money back and $15,000 to hold for her. She just happen to be an American nurse working at a Nigerian hospital and was waiting for the government to pay her salary. Whenever he demanded his money back, she kept promising him more money (i.e., $15K, $17K and $20K).
He refused to acknowledge that he had gotten scammed by Nigerian confidence scammers. Such an admission would be painful as this isn't the first time he ever got scammed and he doesn't have much else at 60. When he mentioned to her that he was having problems with the IRS, he got a call an hour later from an IRS agent demanding $5,000 for back taxes that he didn't owe. He called the IRS and found out that was a scam.
They're still "dating" but things have cooled off now that they're fighting about money he wants back from her and she wants more from him.
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Working on anti-spam products, I see some of the most amazing things.
There are dozens of "spoof person A in email to person B to get something valuable" variations. Money, W2 forms, anything.
A recent favorite is to compromise someone's email. Keep monitoring their email, and when some financial transaction is about to happen, forge an email as if it were from the party receiving the money, to the sender of the money, saying "Oh, because reasons, our bank account had to change, send the money to ...."
The forged email has the whole legitimate back-and-forth conversation about the transaction quoted, just as if it were a genuine reply.
So what happens when a genuine seller gets payment in advance, ships the goods, and then the buyer rolls back the transaction?
What if everybody starts rolling back transactions willy-nilly?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So what happens when a genuine seller gets payment in advance, ships the goods, and then the buyer rolls back the transaction?
What if everybody starts rolling back transactions willy-nilly?
Then the banks start charging 3% transaction fees so they can include "free fraud protection" like the credit card companies do. I am sure they would be happy to do so...
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
And businesses will tell them to fuck off.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."