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BBB: Employee scam costing Nebraskans millions

bbb employee email scam presser
Posted at 10:32 AM, Sep 26, 2019
and last updated 2019-09-26 19:17:15-04

OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — A warning for metro businesses large and small; teach your employees to look for email scams.

A Better Business Bureau study says business email compromise scams have cost more than 50,000 companies about $3 billion in the last 3 years.

Experts say scammers will watch your company closely and send an email to an employee who handles money pretending to be the CEO. They typically ask them to wire money for a secret deal, or special project while the real CEO is out of the office.

The BBB says these crimes go massively underreported and most of these sophisticated scams originates in Nigeria.

"This is an explosive crime as we've detailed and we do believe that businesses need to get actively engaged in testing their employees and getting them ramped up for this kind of thing," said Jim Hegarty, President of the Better Business Bureau of Nebraska, SW Iowa, South Dakota, and Great Plains Kansas.

If you’ve been scammed contact your bank and local law enforcement immediately.

Tips for protecting your business:

  • Test your employees to make sure they can recognize a scam.
  • Have all emails not from an internal sender be marked “External Sender.”
  • Call the person supposedly contacting you for the money.
  • Watch for misspelled words or words and phrases out of context.

Watch the full press conference here: