The Moorestown Police have been investigating several attempts to defraud local businesses in a scheme called “Spear Phishing”. These are very sophisticated attacks that can quickly defraud companies. All of these attempts were directed at the finance director, accounts payable/receivable employees, or someone authorized to issue payment or process orders. If any business receives an email directing them to change the financial institution on a customer’s account, it is our recommendation to ALWAYS follow up this request with a phone call to the company to verify. Also avoid hitting “reply” without verifying the email address’ accuracy.
All three Moorestown cases were similar in the fact that someone infiltrated a Moorestown company’s website to obtain their businesses management structure and then pretended to be a customer of theirs also mimicking their management structure. At some point, emails are exchanged but the email of the customer is slightly altered so when the business hit’s reply, they are unaware that they are now carrying on a conversation with the fraudsters. At some point, there is an email that directs the business to send payment to a new bank account or a new ABA routing number. The emails are very convincing and usually mirror the salutation or other identifiers of the actual customer. In all cases, the suspects are using actual customers names who are in the actual positions to authorize these actions. Contact Detectives at 856-914-3092 or detectives@moorestownpd.com if you need further information.