Leoni AG, Europe’s
largest supplier of
wires, cables, optical fibers and wiring systems, has fallen victim to the
now infamous “business email scam” (BEC). The
company has been forced to admit to having been defrauded of $44.6 million.
The
company’s main business is in supplying wiring and cables for the
automative industry – its
biggest contracts are with BMW, Mercedes and Rolls Royce. Leoni generated over $5 billion in group sales in 2015 and
has over 75,000 employees in 32 countries but
the scammers
only
needed to find one careless financial
officer asleep at the wheel. With
a carefully worded email they
were able to
convince that
CFO
to transfer funds to the wrong bank
account.
The
fraudsters were
meticulous in their choice of
correspondent
within Leoni. They sent a carefully written email to
CFO at Leoni’s Bistrita factory purporting
to come from
one of the company’s top German executives. The
factory in Bistrita was the only entity amongst the four Romanian factories
authorized to transfer
funds.
The
Bistrita branch manufactures wiring and cables for the popular
Mercedes Benz E-Class vehicles.
The
manner in which the email was worded suggests that they
had extensive
knowledge
of
the internal procedures for approving and transferring funds.
According
to unconfirmed reports the money was moved to an account in the
Czech Republic.
0 comments:
Post a Comment