Recent Scam Emails Target Employees By Posing As Upper Management
Employees receiving urgent emails from upper management within their place of employment are encouraged to carefully examine the emails before responding to or complying with them.
According to Los Angeles County’s District Attorney’s Office, employees within companies are being targeted in a recent email scam, called a compromise email scam, by appearing to be someone in upper management sending an urgent email.
“Suppose you get an email at work that’s flagged as urgent coming directly from your supervisor, except it’s not. In the business email compromise scam, criminals will disguise email addresses to look like they’re being sent from within the victim’s workplace,” Sean Hassett, the deputy district attorney, explained.
These scammers are using fake email addresses and modeling them to look similar to company emails. The fraudulent emails are being marked as urgent and encourage employees to immediately transfer funds to a client. Unfortunately, employees who are falling for the scam are making the mistake of transferring funds to the scammer who sent the email.
The Los Angeles County D.A.’s office is encouraging employees within companies that may be responsible for transferring funds to use extreme caution when receiving requests involving sending money to clients from management via email. The D.A. recommends closely reviewing payment requests, closely examining the email address the request was sent from, and confirming the request with management directly before transferring funds.
In this situation, it is always better to reach out to the member of upper management who sent the email for confirmation.
Business Email Scam – BEC Wire Scam – ?If you get an email from a seemingly trusted source asking you to wire some money or share some sensitive information, it might be best to hit the delete button' https://t.co/zeEFzQIQk2
— Ripoff Report (@RipoffReport) March 24, 2019
According to NBC 7 San Diego, the compromise email scam isn’t the only fraudulent activity individuals need to be on high alert about. Tax season is still upon as and more and more people are filing their taxes and receiving their refunds. Unfortunately, tax season also comes with a very high number of tax-related scams.
The most common tax-related scam involves receiving a phone call from someone claiming to be an IRS agent with the hopes of obtaining your personal information. These scammers attempt to threaten and scare the individual on the other end of the phone to gain information.
Business email compromise scams can be highly sophisticated and are impacting businesses more than any other scam. Always double check changes in payment details directly with the recipient. One phone call can save your business a lot of money.https://t.co/JOpKHM9QGH
— Scamwatch_gov_au (@Scamwatch_gov) March 21, 2019
The easiest way to avoid a tax-related scam is to hang up the phone or delete any emails from someone claiming to be with the IRS, and then give the IRS a phone call instead. Explain the situation to the representative you speak with when you call in and find out whether an IRS agent has been trying to reach out to you.
