Supermarket sweep
Phishers almost get away with $10m scam.
Court documents have revealed that phishers nearly managed a whopping $10
million supermarket (bank account) sweep earlier this year.
Supervalu Inc., one of the largest grocery retail chains in the US, fell for a
simple scam in which scammers sent the company emails purporting to be
from two of the chain's approved suppliers, American Greetings Corp. and
Frito-Lay Inc. In each case the email stated that the supplier had changed
its bank account and requested that the retailer update its details and
make all future payments into the new account.
Over the next four to five
days Supervalu made several deposits into the fraudulent accounts,
with over $6.5m being transferred into the fake account associated with the
American Greetings scam and $3.6m transferred into the account associated
with the Frito-Lay scam.
Fortunately, while Supervalu staff were not on the ball enough to question
the authenticity of the two emails, they did eventually work out that the
bank accounts into which they had deposited more than $10m were bogus.
Supervalu notified the authorities and the accounts were frozen before the
scammers could withdraw the funds.
A Supervalu spokeswoman attributed the
quick discovery of the fraud to the company's internal controls and
processes - perhaps the company will now look at including better security
training for its employees in those internal controls and processes.
01 November 2007
Tags:
phishing, scam.
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