Brazen CEO trick

An unknown perpetrator falsified payment orders and invoices and led an employee to believe he was a business owner. As a result, payments of more than CHF 900,000  were transferred abroad.

According to the press release of the Zug Law Enforcement Authorities in the Canton of Zug, a company was contacted several times by fraudsters last month. An unknown perpetrator asked an employee to settle payment orders and invoices. The requests were always made on behalf of the business owner, so that the employee had made a total of 12 payments to various banks abroad. The amount of the offence is considerable, and amounts to more than CHF 900,000.

The investigation by the Zug Police, as well as the Cyber internal specialist unit and the Public Prosecutor's Office, is ongoing. According to the investigations carried out so far, it must be assumed that the criminal offence was carried out by a professional and well-connected organisation.

The Zug police advise a healthy distrust

• Sensitize your employees and make the new scam known within your company.
• Verify such requests with the client. In doing this, make it mandatory to use a second communication channel. The safest way is via a personal telephone conversation.
• Be sure to re-enter e-mail addresses by hand - in case of doubt, never use the answer function of the e-mail application.
• Never share codes or bank information on the phone or by email.