The ‘bogus boss’ email scam costing firms millions
You return from a trip to find that hundreds of thousands of dollars has been transferred out of company accounts – apparently at your instruction.
But you have no idea what your accountant is talking about – you didn’t give any instructions.
This is what happened to Carole Gratzmuller, boss of a medium-sized French company called Etna Industrie.
Her firm, which employs 50 people and has been making industrial equipment on the outskirts of Paris for nearly 75 years, was the victim of a specialised email phishing attack dubbed CEO fraud, or “fraude au president” as they call it in France.