Law enforcement authorities in about a dozen countries this week apprehended more than 280 suspected email scammers as part of a concerted campaign, known as Operation “reWired”.
Most of the arrests were made in Nigeria and the USA, while a rather handy sum of US$ 3.7 million was seized at the same time, “WIRED” reported in its online edition. The fraudsters had been engaging in Business Email Compromise on a huge scale, meaning that they were sending fake messages from decision-makers to their subordinates in an attempt to induce them to transfer large amounts of money. Here in Germany, this type of scam is more commonly known as CEO fraud or “Chefbetrug”.
The current spate of arrests is just a drop in the ocean, however, with email fraud having long since reached frightening proportions. The FBI recorded 166,000 reported cases of fraud between July 2016 and July 2019 in 177 countries, resulting in losses totaling US$ 26 billion. The amount of damage to companies has doubled in comparison to an earlier estimate from 2018 (and one can safely assume that the hidden number of unreported cases is considerably higher).
While training and sensitizing employees who are most vulnerable to the risk is indispensible in combating BEC and CEO fraud, technical measures can also be of vital importance. As part of the ATP package (Advanced Threat Protection) offered with its Email Security service, Retarus provides dedicated CxO Fraud Detection. This service subjects email to an algorithmic check which detects “From-Spoofing” and “Domain-Spoofing”. You can find more details about this on our website or by getting in touch with your local Retarus representative.
