Staff Reporter
WINDHOEK – FNB has warned of yet another email scam making the rounds in companies targeting finance department employees. Ingrid Kahona-Katjiukua, FNB Forensics explains that these innocent-looking payment requests could result in financial loss for companies as finance department employees are targeted with fraudulent emails.
“We have recently seen a scam involving fake electronic funds transfer request emails. While this technique is not new, there has been an increase in this type of scam. The purpose of this type of email is to get the recipient to process a payment for non-existent goods or services by way of an electronic transfer. The scammers send an email to a target recipient, usually pretending to be the CEO or a senior executive of the organisation. The scammers will usually send the fake electronic funds transfer emails to employees working in the finance department of a company, as those employees will have the ability to action payment requests.”
FNB Namibia has requested all companies to warn their employees as scammers seem to register domains very similar to the target domain. “The reason for this is that when a recipient replies to the email, the scammer hopes that they might not notice the slight difference in the domain and think it’s from a trusted sender. We wish to advise that financial employees – or anyone receiving a funds transfer request – which seems out of the ordinary, always check that the sender is who they say they are. Check the email headers to see where the email has originated from, and to contact the bank immediately.”