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Grocery Store Accused for $10 Million Phishing Scam

A big grocery store, Supervalu, was found to be involved in a phishing swindle, which tricked it to send $10 Million to fake bank accounts, as per the documents of court. The fraud appeared when Supervalu, Idaho, got two mails, one from Frito-lay and another allegedly from American Greetings employee. The e-mail reports that the companies required payments, which were sent to the new bank account numbers.

Without any knowledge that it was a scam, Supervalu sent almost $6.5 Million to fraudulent account of American Greetings and $3.6 Million to bogus account of Frito-lay.

As per a spokeswoman, Supervalu succeeded in stopping the money from withdrawn with the help of 'internal controls' and FBI that helped the company in recognizing and detecting the scam. Further, American Greetings, Supervalu and Frito-Lay are standing against each other for the authority of the money. B. Lynn Winmill, the US district judge, will decide in whose custody the money should go.

It has been examined that either it is fluke or it is an emerging trend of targeting business and organization. Naturally, this isn't the first example where businesses are being traumatized by e-mail scams. As per internetnews.com, sometimes, these sophisticated attacks are termed as spear phishing.

Spear phishing is totally different from regular phishing because here, the individuals are attacked by their names and even in some cases, by both name and title. Spear phishing is all about a close assessment of the client's infrastructure and security standing.

Supervalu started sending payment to American Greetings in the fake account on February 28. The company has send nine payments in total before knowing about the scam where the amount was sent to the HSBC Bank in Miami Beach in Florida.

Supervalu's legal services' Vice President, Stephen Kilgriff, stated that the company got a mail on February 28 in which it was asked that future wire transfer will be sent to a First Security Bank Account in Rogers, Arkansas. On March 6, after informing the police, the fraud was disclosed, as per the news by webpronews.com on October 31, 2007.

In the recent times, it has been analyzed that phishing has developed and become more sophisticated. As per the statistics by anti-spam firm ClearMyMail, the most common source of stealing personal data through e-mail was originated in the US.

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