CEO Fraud

CEO Fraud is a fraud method in which the attacker poses as a CEO, manager or boss and asks employees to transfer money to a specific account, for example. If the attacker uses email as a means of communication, CEO fraud is a form of business email compromise (BEC). In the case of CEO Fraud, however, other attack vectors are also possible, up to and including the use of telephone deepfakes.

Alternative terms for CEO Fraud are CEO Fraud, Chief Fraud or Fake President Fraud (FPF). How contact is made in CEO fraud is not specified. However, because employees may transfer large amounts of money without being asked simply because of the boss’s authority, CEO fraud poses a major risk to companies. Companies in which an authoritarian management style prevails and no safeguarding processes are established are particularly susceptible.

How does CEO Fraud work?

The more information the attacker has about the company, processes, employees and bosses, the greater the chances of success for the fraud method. Therefore, criminals scout out possible victims and identities they want to assume in advance. For example, they use information from company websites, from social networks or from personal conversations with employees. Once all the necessary information is collected, contact is made with the victim. By e-mail or telephone, the supposed boss presents a request and asks the victim to perform a certain activity. The attackers build up pressure and use clever psychological manipulation of the victim. They often indicate the confidentiality of the matter. Because of the authority of the supposed boss, many employees are susceptible to this type of manipulation. Typical action that the victim is supposed to perform is transferring a large amount of money or paying a customer’s bill to a named account.

We are able to take immediate action on your behalf and stop possible money transfers immediately. In doing so, we build on an information-gathering process and immediately contact those entities where it makes sense for us to do so, so that a solution can be found together.