Friday at 6 PM, you receive a message from your financial manager: “I have an urgent matter for you because you are my trusted person here. Can you validate this payment for a consulting invoice? This payment must go out tonight absolutely!”
The payment in question is for an amount of 150,000 EUR to Panama.
You made the payment under pressure but realized too late that it was a fraud and that your financial manager's email had been hacked. You have been a victim of president fraud...
President fraud is essentially the act of a fraudster who seeks to impersonate a member of management, a manager, or a strategic partner by using urgency, psychological pressure, confidentiality, and especially supposed authority to obtain a fraudulent payment, a change of IBAN, or access to sensitive information.
Fraudsters often use the same modus operandi: they start with identity theft through hacking a communication channel (email, phone, WhatsApp, LinkedIn), psychological pressure is then exerted by insisting on confidentiality, followed by an unusual payment request or a change of IBAN.
Several signals should immediately alert you:
an urgent and unusual request from an executive,
an absolute demand for confidentiality,
a payment to a new beneficiary or a high-risk country,
a message received outside of usual hours, a slightly modified email address, or a request not to follow the usual procedure.
These elements often indicate an attempted fraud and should lead to immediate verification.
If any of these signals appear, take the time to verify the authenticity of the instruction because doubt is allowed (i.e., call back to validate the instruction).