Fraudulent Automated Clearing House (ACH) Transfers
Within the last several months, the FBI has seen a significant increase in fraud involving the exploitation
of valid online banking credentials belonging to small and medium businesses, municipal governments, and school districts. In a typical scenario, the targeted entity receives a “spear phishing” email which either contains an infected attachment, or directs the recipient to an infected web site. Once the recipient opens the attachment or visits the web site, malware is installed on their computer. The malware contains a key logger which will harvest the recipients business or corporate bank account log-in information. Shortly thereafter, the perpetrator either creates another user account with the stolen log-in information, or directly initiates funds transfers by masquerading as the legitimate user. These transfers have occurred as both traditional wire transfers and as ACH transfers.