Scamming, phishing, pharming, vishing — people in the business world are well aware that hackers and other fraudsters have developed a myriad of schemes designed to obtain sensitive personal information and money. Every year, these schemes cause businesses to suffer significant financial losses. The FBI estimates that in 2020 business email compromise (“BEC”) and email account compromise (“EAC”) schemes caused losses of $1.86 billion. To combat these schemes, companies spend thousands of dollars to secure their computer systems and train their employees to recognize and prevent fraudulent schemes from succeeding. But no matter the preventative steps taken by businesses, hackers and fraudsters manage to stay one step ahead with new, creative schemes.
A recent fraud that businesses have unfortunately experienced is EAC, where hackers gain access to and use legitimate business email accounts of vendors and service providers to direct customers to send money to unauthorized accounts. EAC affects businesses ranging from small to large and can occur in any industry, including financial institutions, real estate, contractors and law firms. In a typical EAC scenario, hackers gain access to a person’s actual email account and are able to monitor the incoming and outgoing correspondence in order to learn business practices, customer information and payment terms. At an appropriate time, the hackers use the email account to send payment instructions to a customer who legitimately...
A Delaware County doctor has agreed to pay more than $1.6 million back after admitting to filing more than 27,000 fraudulent Medicaid claims. Dr. Patrick Muffley, 56, of Lewis Center, pleaded guilt...