FBI: Don't Fall for This Money-Transfer Video-Chat Scam
Is it a video call from your CEO, or a scammer trying to trick you into transferring money?
On Wednesday, the FBI warned about a disturbing uptick in fraudsters exploiting virtual meeting platforms to swindle companies out of cash. In some cases, the schemes even involve hijacking video meeting accounts belonging to company executives and impersonating them.
The fraud is more commonly known as business email compromise (BEC). This is when a scammer tries to trick a company’s internal staff into wiring huge amounts of cash to a bank account, often by hijacking the corporate email inbox of a CEO, CFO, or other executive. For example, an unsuspecting employee will receive a seemingly legitimate message about wiring money to pay a customer, not realizing the email is a ruse to steal funds.
BEC-related attacks and other email-spoofing scams have plagued the corporate world for years. However, the rise of video conferencing during the pandemic has given cybercriminals a new avenue to trick employees into wiring company funds.
“Between 2019 through 2021, the FBI IC3 has received an increase of BEC complaints involving the use of virtual meeting platforms to instruct victims to send unauthorized transfers of funds to fraudulent accounts,” the agency wrote in the public alert.
In some cases, the fraudsters break into the email accounts of a CEO or CFO. They’ll then request that employees attend a virtual meeting and impersonate the company executive.
The impersonation doesn’t usually involve the scammer appearing on camera dressed up as the company executive. Instead, the FBI said the fraudsters employ various tricks to conceal or fabricate the executive’s identity, including using AI-created deepfake audio.
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