Sharp rise in fraud attempts against businesses

Sharp rise in fraud attempts against businessesOslo.The offices of the Economic Crime Division.Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix
Economic Crime Division now has to deal with a new kind of fraud, the so-called CEO-fraud, where companies are defrauded of large sums of money.
– We see that the Norwegian companies are under a lot of pressure now. I do not know the excact number of cases, but me and the rest of the Economic Crime Division receive inquiries two to three times a day from companies  who are wondering what they are or have been exposed to,  counselor Anne Dybos in the Economic Crime Division says to the newspaper Aftenposten.
They had the first case of CEO scams, also referred to as CEO fraud last summer. Now, after the New Year, have  the number of cases  skyrocketed.
CEO fraud – after the Englishtitle chief or executive officer – is ,briefly explained, a way of making companies  give away large sums of money. The way this tends to happen is that an employee, often an accountant or manager, is tricked into paying a large sum of money from the corporate account. They do this by getting the victim to believe the transmission is in the firm’s interest.
– Companies may at first believe that  they have an “unfaithful servant” who got the money himself or gave it away to other companies, but then they are completely fooled,  Dybos says.
Several police districts investigating cases in which Norwegian companies have been defrauded of millions of kroner. In the interests of the investigation, will Economic Crime Division will not say anything about cases which have been investigated in hiding in recent months.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today