I have just been made aware of a scam that is being perpetrated upon the hunting industry. What appears to be happening is that hackers from Nigeria have hacked into outfitters e mails and obtained client information. They are then contacting clients and asking them to wire the money due to a new account. This has happened to some outfitters who post here. I will not name names. This has happed several times and it has happened to several outfitters. Thus far, I am aware of this situation affecting outfitting outfitters in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. However, that does not mean there are not others.

I would strongly recommend that you verbally confirm the wiring instruction you receive with someone you know before you make any wires. This is real.

The small town bank I deal with requires a phone number of the recipient as well as the recipients bank, and they call both prior to sending the wire. Seems like a good idea to me.

I have received numerous emails over the years from people pretending to book a hunt ... never did figure out how that could result in my being out money but then again I never went down the path.

Wire transfer fraud is plaguing many industries. Thanks for posting Larry.

Here is a previous post with some suggestions:

http://forums.accuratereloadin...171004022#3171004022

A good example of how having an agent stateside that handles all the money can be valuable...

highjack over...carry on

I have since learned that this has happened with clients heading to Zambia as well. Also, one person lost $60,000.

Coincidentally, I happened to have a real estate closing just today. I had to wire a large sum of money. My attorney was exercising great caution. She even went as far as calling to verify the instructions. I thought it was over kill. I get it now.

Maybe we should nuke Nigeria on our way back from North Korea....what a cesspool

our bank has started requiring phone numbers of recipients and i have had a couple of occasions when they haven't been able to get through they haven't sent the wire - yes indeed hackers are everywhere thanks for the heads up larry -

Thanks for the heads up, Larry. Just emailed my outfitter a few days ago about my final payment and received some new account info from them for a "USD account." Just sent him a whatsapp message to verify it was indeed an email from him.

This is pretty sophisticated. They are clever. Be careful.

Another more sophisticated system is you get a "sleeping Trojan virus" that watches everything you do. We were working an acquisition for quite some time and were down south for something completely different. An email was sent from our CEO's account to our CFO that we closed the deal and gave instructions to send money now. Thankfully our CFO called as this was not normal. The investigation revealed very sophisticated technology was at work for quite sometime.

Safe shooting.........LL

NEVER send any money without a verbal request.

Just got whatsapp verification that it was indeed my guys that sent the request. Thanks all for the heads up and concerns.

I got this today. It is directly related to this matter. Names and numbers redacted.

Hi All

Please be advised that xxxxxxx@yahoo.com has been hacked. Hackers have been sending all my clients emails requesting money for past and future hunts to be sent to a new bank account due to errors with current bank account. The email address looks similar to my yahoo one which may be over looked at first glance, however the email itself is riddled with grammatical errors and sentences which do not make sense even though written in English. Suffice to say xxxxxxxx@yahoo.com will no longer be in use. Please could you contact me on this email address going forward. If you have received a request for payment, please clarify it with myself on (+xxxxxxxx) or my wife xxxx (+xxxxxxxx), as a I am away quite a bit at the moment via watsapp or message.


Sorry for any inconvenience and Thank you for understanding.

Regards

I'm a banker and we deal with this stuff constantly. The level of sophistication by some of these criminals would stun you. We constantly get tested internally by our IT staff, who try to get us to 'bite' on phishing attempts. Anyone who slips up gets a little extra training. I believe most banks do this now, and it'd be a good idea to inquire what your bank does in this area. Remember, strong passwords that are changed periodically are one of the best defenses. So is a healthy dose of suspicion and verification any time you are sending money by any means.

You should view any and every email contact with suspicion and if ANYTHING strikes you as even slightly out of normal, confirm it directly with the sender by some other means. I've had some fraudster try a scheme on me multiple times this month under the name of "ATT Business services" and after checking the very first senders address, I simply delete every one now. All you have to do to verify the senders address is hover your mouse over the senders address and it'll pop up with the entire email address, not just the sender's 'name'. It's often obvious when you see an email address if you just take a moment to do this simple step.

To give you an idea of how grand these fraudsters think, we recently got a training notice about a Silicon Valley company that was a victim of fraud by someone (company CFO, IIRC) who clicked on a malicious email and got a Trojan horse installed on his computer, which then monitored him for several months. Then, when the time was right, he got a 'CEO' email about closing an acquisition they were finalizing and wired over $38,000,000 to the criminals fake account that had been set up for this ruse. The money was never recovered.

If you are ever wiring money in large sums, independently verify the wiring instructions (not back to the other sides email. Do it by phone, fax or in person if possible) before giving your bank wiring instructions. Yes, it's a pain in the ass but a heck of a lot better than getting ripped off for a large sum of money.

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:


Coincidentally, I happened to have a real estate closing just today. I had to wire a large sum of money. My attorney was exercising great caution. She even went as far as calling to verify the instructions. I thought it was over kill. I get it now.

My wife is a paralegal for a real estate law firm. She helped bust a wire fraud perpetrator just this year.

Just before a closing, she received an email from the "seller," asking that proceeds from the sale be sent to a different wire address than the one she had.

Apparently, being married to a career Military Police office has instilled some investigative doubt in her, as she immediately became suspicious and called the seller, who confirmed he'd never sent an email concerning the wire.

She reported the situation to her managing attorney who in turn called the FBI. They came to the office within the hour.

My wife was instructed to maintain email exchanges with the scammer, so the FBI could trace the source of the emails. The crook had hacked the seller's email account and was sending messages that appeared to come from the legitimate seller.

Long story short, the FBI caught the guy, who turned out to be involved in numerous fraudulent email scams.

Stealing money through fraudulent wire transfers is a major problem these days, according to the FBI.

Gig 'em Nitro !!!

I work for a large bank and our caution lights are always blinking on yellow where wires are concerned. When I'm asked to approve a wire, I talk to the first level banker involved to find out if (1) this is normal and expected; and (2) WHOM AT THE CUSTOMER'S PLACE OF BUSINESS DID THEY TALK TO, IN CONFIRMING THE REQUEST?

When things look "odd", we wait until the oddities are better understood. Better to delay a day then make a big$ mistake.

The FBI is now involved.

Thanks for the heads up. Scary stuff.

I guess technology has gone full circle, and we are back to face-to-face and telephone business transactions. Whats old is new.

Larry - This thread is informative and terrifying on multiple levels.

Everything I do financially is normally via wires. I don't like to do wires outside the US.

In the US I normally like wires within known networks (i.e. Wells Fargo as sending and receiving).

After this I am going to ask for verbal verification of all wires above $5k.

This is also why I hate bringing trophies back - cause you need to send wires to all these weird offshore entities. Allmthe Africa operators I use have us bank accounts.

Mike

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
I got this today. It is directly related to this matter. Names and numbers redacted.

Hi All

Please be advised that xxxxxxx@yahoo.com has been hacked. Hackers have been sending all my clients emails requesting money for past and future hunts to be sent to a new bank account due to errors with current bank account. The email address looks similar to my yahoo one which may be over looked at first glance, however the email itself is riddled with grammatical errors and sentences which do not make sense even though written in English. Suffice to say xxxxxxxx@yahoo.com will no longer be in use. Please could you contact me on this email address going forward. If you have received a request for payment, please clarify it with myself on (+xxxxxxxx) or my wife xxxx (+xxxxxxxx), as a I am away quite a bit at the moment via watsapp or message.


Sorry for any inconvenience and Thank you for understanding.

Regards

What amazes me is that these assholes are sophisticated enough to put together such a scam but too stupid to get someone that speaks and writes good English to set them in motion.

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
I have since learned that this has happened with clients heading to Zambia as well. Also, one person lost $60,000.

Coincidentally, I happened to have a real estate closing just today. I had to wire a large sum of money. My attorney was exercising great caution. She even went as far as calling to verify the instructions. I thought it was over kill. I get it now.

I do a lot of wires for business. One time Revenue Canada lost a wire for about 20K. Could not find it for months; finally they "found" it. Lesson learned: send the money in CDN, not US, or it will go thru an intermediary.

I had an incoming wire this week for a quarter of mil that came in no problem.

But Larry's post does make me think I should not just blindly accept wire instructions for business...I suppose the next scam will be doing the same thing for real estate transactions...oops, just read Nitro's post!!!

I send a lot of money for RE transactions for my real estate biz...I better be more careful.

Just noticed someone from Ghana has browsed my website and the only page viewed was my References page. This was done through a Google search.

Location: Accra, 01, Ghana
Referrer: https://www.google.com.gh/

What Pages Have They Seen?
References
10 min ago

I suspect this browser to be one of those f@$&ers.

The wire fraud problem is increasing. A lot of times you no longer see the bad English that was a dead giveaway, they are using phrases and a client's syntax to make it seem like a truly legitimate email.

Had this attempt to happen a couple of times, fortunately we have a policy of verbally confirming (as in talk directly to the client, not phone tag)which avoided any problems.

The bottom line though is the emails looked and sounded legitimate and the wire instructions were not to places that would normally raise a red flag.