Individuals should be vigilant of emails concerning tax refunds. Fraudsters consistently send spam appearing to be from the IRS and financial institutions containing a link to a phishing website and/or malware typically during tax season in the US. Fraudsters then attempt to either socially engineer potential victims and/or infect their computers in order to gain [...]

The NCFTA, along with its law enforcement and industry partners, has observed that cyber criminals are gaining access to compromised email accounts and leveraging the relationship between the email account holder and their financial advisor to request unauthorized wire transfers. The criminals either use the existing email address or slightly change the email address by adding or supplementing a letter or number. The criminals then typically attempt to socially engineer the advisor through stories of hardship or loss in order to justify the wire transfer.

Once the criminals have verified the amount in the account, they request that funds be sent to bank accounts in the US, Australia, and Malaysia. Some of the funds sent to US and Australian accounts have ultimately been sent to Malaysian accounts. Some of the money mules were recruited by romance scams on dating websites. Banks, brokerage firms, and credit unions of all sizes have been affected by this scam.

Please see http://www.ic3.gov/media/2012/EmailFraudWireTransferAlert.pdf for additional information on this scam and guidance on how to report such incidents to law enforcement.