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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.
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
Wire transfers can and are reversed all the time. That's where the second victim in the scam (David Aldridge) comes in.
The fraudster convinces David to accept a wire transfer on her behalf. When he receives the money, he withdraws it and hands over the cash to her. She then disappears. When the bank tries to reverse the wire transfer and finds the money is gone, the person liable for it is the second mark in the fraud, not the fraudster.
If you've ever gotten a scammy-looking email asking if you'd help transfer some money by receiving a payment (Western Union is more common, though I've seem bank wire ones), and they'll let you keep some excess funds as payment, you are the second mark. The money transfer is fraudulent. And when the transferring bank/company tries to reverse it, you will be on the hook for the full amount. (This differs from the Nigeria 419 scam, where they try to make you pre-pay some fees to initiate a transaction which never occurs. In these scams, the transaction actually occurs, and the scammer is relying on the time it takes between the transfer and reversal to dupe you into parting with the ill-gotten money.)