About Your Long-Lost Uncle in Nigeria

Unless you live under a rock (or in a weird commune), you’ve probably seen your fair share of “Nigerian” email scams. You know, “my uncle just gave me 1M and I need to transfer it to a (random and naive) US citizen.” Don’t trust those, by the way. Well, the more sophisticated bad guys have been able to scam millions of dollars from major corporations using the same tactics, otherwise known as business email compromise (BEC).

The most recent wave of email attacks have targeted Fortune 500 companies with scams designed to trick victims into fraudulent wire transfers. The bad news is that these attacks are already up 45 percent over 2017. Good news is that in a recent sweep, authorities from the US and other counties worked together to snag 74 malicious actors (from Nigeria, Canada, Mauritius, and Poland) and recover millions of dollars. Be suspicious of unusual email and if it looks to good to be true, well…