$57,000 recovered in business e-mail compromise scam

On Sept 18, a consultancy firm based in Singapore filed a police report after it fell prey to a business e-mail compromise scam.

With the assistance from the UAE authorities and Interpol, the Anti-Scam Command (ASCom) of the Singapore Police Force (SPF) managed to recover over US$45,000 ($57,000).

One of the firm's employees on Sept 12 received an e-mail from a "supplier" requesting for payment for purchased goods to be made to a UAE-based bank account.

The employee did not notice that the sender's email address ended with ".store" instead of the regular ".com" and made a transfer of US$45,532.42 to the purported supplier on Sept 18.

The fraud was uncovered on the same day, when the legitimate supplier informed the employee that the supplier's company had not changed its bank account.