The scam is also known as ‘CEO fraud’ and usually targets businesses and not consumers. The bulk of the cases involved requests to transfer funds to banks in Hong Kong and China, though a total of 79 countries have been identified to date.
According to FBI, US and foreign victims reported 22,143 cases involving business email compromise cases in which cyber criminals sent requests for some USD 3.1 billion in fraudulent transfers from October 2013.
The FBI said the jump in cases since its last record was due to the high level of recent activity, as well as an effort by law enforcement agencies around the world to identify such scams as business email compromise, rather than generic wire fraud.
The FBI said it has seen a 1,300% increase in identified exposed losses since January 2015. The size of the losses varies widely from case to case, from about USD 10,000 to tens of millions of dollars.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now