Portland Public Schools almost got BEC scammed a HUGE $2.9 million

Scamming is becoming more and more prevalent in this day and age, and the new form of scamming that is hitting the internet in waves is 'business email compromise' or BEC for short.

What is a BEC scam? Well, its actually quite simple when you think about it. A BEC scam is when a criminal impersonates a third-party convinces someone at a business to wire them business funds. Usually the criminal will locate someone within the business that has access to the companies funds, once that person is located the criminal might compromise the email account holder or the companies supplier and request funds to be paid to them. Some cases of BEC scams have been based entirely on social engineering through spoofed email accounts.

In the case of Portland Public Schools, the scammer got two employee's at the schools to send him money as the scammer was posing as one of the institution's construction contractors. The employees unknowingly sent the scammer a staggering $2.9 million dollars, luckily Portland Schools moved extremely quickly and contacted the banks to freeze the transaction. The transaction was successfully frozen, and Portland Public School contacted the FBI for further investigation into the matter.

The moral of this story is to always be safe online and double check email addresses, requests or anything that you might think to be suspicious. Especially since everything is now online, and scammers are constantly thinking up new ways of taking the easy road in life. See something, say something.