Dealing with one boss is bad enough but a growing number of employees are finding that someone claiming to be their boss can cause even more problems. This is because there is a type of fraud called “bogus boss” fraud and it can cause great trouble to firms. This is a style of fraud that has caused considerable difficulty in France but it has also harmed firms in the United States of America and as always, if something happens in America, it will make its way to Britain at some point.
Some of the most common examples of email fraud are:
- Someone posing as a boss or CEO and instructing an employee to transfer funds
- Someone posting as a member of a bank’s IT team and requesting that a test transfer is made – but it’s not a test
- Someone posing as a supplier and request that all outstanding sums are paid into a different bank account
- Employees receiving a phishing email, clicking on the link and exposing the company to malware which leads to a high volume of small transactions to be removed from the company
One of the things that makes this style of fraud very attractive for fraudsters is the fact that this is a fraud that can be carried out very quickly. There is also the fact that emails can be sent out en masse, which means that a fraudster can target a great sum of companies at the same time. There are plenty of automated software programmes that make life easier for businesses but these software programmes can also provide fraudsters with assistance when it comes to reaching out to potential victims.
This is a Fraud that Offers Great Rewards
When a fraudster is sending out so many emails at one time, they know that the law of probabilities will be on their side. It is likely that the vast majority of respondents will ignore their request but it only takes one or a small number of targets to provide the fraudsters with funding and they will have received considerable sums of money. In this regard, it is a strategy that many people decide is worth taking.
It should be seen that this style of crime is similar to a boiler room fraud. The vast majority of targets will say no and block the potential fraud from happening but by persevering, one or two targets will likely say yes and this is where the real benefits come from. Knowing that the rewards from a successful fraud are so high, fraudsters will keep working this strategy until it pays off.
This has caused a lot of Trouble in the United States
In America, this style of fraud has been referred to as “business email compromise” and the FBI, or the IC3 team, believes that 7,000 firms have been victims of this style of fraud in the past two years. This has led to a total of $740m, which equates to over £500m.
Of course, these are the figures for the crimes that are known about and it is likely that there are many crimes of this nature which are undetected and unreported. Some firms upon discovering they have been victims of this style of crime may decide to keep the news quiet. It may be that announcing the news may cause greater damage to their shareholders, so many firms will keep it internal and try and deal with the fall-out with releasing any information to the public.
One reason why this style of crime has been so successful of late has been put down to the fact that it manages to bypass spam filters, antivirus checks and all other manner of technical checks and tests that prevent fraud. This style of fraud often comes down to a conversation and if the company employee isn’t aware that a fraud is taking place or doesn’t react in the right manner, the company will find themselves at considerable risk.
There is also the fact that there is a lot of company information made available to the public, and this provides fraudsters with a great starting point to conduct a backstory for their fraud. Sometimes it is small details that have the biggest impact in convincing someone of your story, and with companies releasing information to the stock exchange and providing details to the general public, a fraudster can create a strong back-story that will help them convince many people during their conversation.
Andrew Reilly is a freelance writer with a focus on news stories and consumer interest articles. He has been writing professionally for 9 years but has been writing for as long as he can care to remember. When Andrew isn’t sat behind a laptop or researching a story, he will be found watching a gig or a game of football.
