NORTH WALES Police's cyber crime unit is concerned with the growing increase in what is known as 'CEO fraud'

Today is Internet Safety Day and the force's Cyber Crime Team insist 'the whole infrastructure of North Wales' is at risk from online fraudsters purporting to be a CEO or company director.

CEO fraud will typically start with an email being sent from a fraudster to a member of staff in a company’s finance department.

The member of staff will be told by the fraudster who is purporting to be a company director or CEO that they need to quickly transfer money to a certain bank account for a specific reason.

The member of staff will do as their boss has instructed, only to find that they have sent money to a fraudster’s bank account. 

The fraudster will normally redistribute this money into other mule accounts and then close down the bank account to make it untraceable.

Out of the £32 million reported to be lost by businesses to CEO fraud only £1 million has been able to be recovered by the victims.

This is due to businesses taking too long to discover that they have been the victim of fraud and the lost money already being moved by fraudsters into mule accounts. Most businesses reported initially being contacted via emails with gmail.com and yahoo.com suffixes. 

A recent report from the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) shows that over £32 million has been reported to be lost as a result of CEO fraud. 

“We’ve had two business this week which have been victims of what we call a CEO fraud,” explains Supt Williams.

“It looks like a managing director has sent the accounts manager a request to transfer money that needs doing today but they’ll have done their reconnaissance to see what the names are and who is in the office and small businesses are so perceptible to this and it leaves the whole infrastructure of North Wales is at risk.”