Treasury's Crime Unit Updates Email Fraud Guidance

Since FinCEN's 2016 BEC Advisory, FinCEN has received over 32,000 reports involving almost $9 billion in attempted theft from BEC fraud schemes affecting U.S. financial institutions and their customers.

"This represents a significant economic impact on the businesses, individuals, and even governments that are targeted by these schemes," the report states.

Financial institutions can continue to play an important role in identifying, preventing and reporting fraud schemes. FinCEN notes the importance of communication and collaboration among internal anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), compliance, business, fraud prevention, legal and cybersecurity departments within financial institutions as well as with other financial institutions across the sector.

The new report updates the original definitions of email compromise fraud, BEC and email account compromise. FinCEN broadens its definitions of email compromise fraud activities to clarify that such fraud targets a variety of types of entities and may be used to misdirect any kind of payment or transmittal of other things of value.

For example, while many email compromise fraud scheme payments are carried out via wire transfers, FinCEN has observed BEC schemes fraudulently inducing funds or value transfers through other methods of payment, to include convertible virtual currency payments, automated clearing house transfers, and purchases of gift cards.

— Check out FBI Sees Big Rise in Internet Crime Complaints, Losses on ThinkAdvisor.