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. del.icio.us digg this