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In CEO fraud or social engineering, fraudsters impersonate a company’s CEO (or other internal or external person of trust) to manipulate an internal employee of that company into performing an action (often a payment) or revealing confidential information.
Fraudsters first gather information about a company’s internal payment procedures and the employees authorised to process large payment transactions. The fraudsters do this by contacting employees by email or telephone, posing as auditors or a government department.
When the fraudsters have enough information, they contact one or more employees responsible for payments (such as accounting) and pose as the CEO. To do this, they usually hack into the CEO’s mailbox or create a fake email address that closely resembles the CEO’s CEO FRAUD real address. In this case, often one letter is changed in relation to the official address. The fraudsters then concoct a story requiring a large sum of money to be urgently transferred and urge the employee(s) to keep the matter strictly confidential.
Sometimes the fraudsters take things a step further by involving a consultancy or a lawyer (whose identity they have assumed). The consultancy or lawyer will confirm the transaction and reiterate that the payment is urgent and confidential.
Employees who fall into this trap unwittingly transfer large sums of money to the accounts of money mules, from which the money is then diverted to the fraudsters’ accounts.