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Losses from these scams, which are known as "business email
compromise," totaled more than $2.3 billion from October 2013
through February of this year, the FBI said in an alert issued
this week, citing reports to law enforcement agencies around the
globe.
The cases involved some 17,642 businesses of all sizes scattered
across at least 79 countries, according to the FBI alert posted
on the website of the agency's Phoenix bureau.
Law enforcement and cyber security experts have been warning
that business email compromise was on the rise, but the extent
of losses has not previously been disclosed.
Cyber security experts say they expect losses to grow as the
high profits will attract more criminals.
"It's a low-risk, high-reward crime. It's going to continue to
get worse before it gets better," said Tom Brown, a former
federal prosecutor in Manhattan.
The FBI's alert said that fraudsters go to great lengths to
spoof company email accounts and use other methods to trick
employees into believing that they are receiving money-transfer
requests from CEOs, corporate attorneys or trusted vendors.
"They research employees who manage money and use language
specific to the company they are targeting, then they request a
wire fraud transfer using dollar amounts that lend legitimacy,"
the alert said.
It said they often target businesses that work with foreign
suppliers or regularly perform wire transfers.
The size of the losses vary widely from case to case.
Austrian aircraft parts FACC said in January that it lost about
50 million euros ($55 million) through such a scam. In Arizona,
the average loss ranges from $25,000 to $75,000, according to
the FBI.
The FBI said in its alert, which was dated Monday, that it has
seen a 270 percent increase in identified victims and exposed
loss since January 2015.
Brown, who now runs the cyber investigations unit with Berkeley
Research Group, said that the potential consequences of the
breach of an email account are sometimes not immediately
apparent to victims.
"This shows that even the hack of an email account can cause
significant financial loss," Brown said.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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