Phishing scam: Barbara Corcoran loses $400,000 from one email

A few days ago...

A regular employee with good intentions went about her day and wired close to $400,000 to a real estate renovation project. Little did she know that she had sent it to a email phishing scammer.

The money belonged to Barbara Corcoran,

New York Real Estate genius and Shark Tank host. According to a USA Today article, Corcoran said, “I lost the $388,700 as a result of a fake email chain sent to my bookkeeper… There was no reason to be suspicious as I invest in a lot of real estate.”

What happened was that a hacker tweaked Corcoran’s assistant’s email address by just one letter to send an email to her staff.

Like most cybercrime victims, Corcoran won’t get her money back.

Phishing attempts like this one continue to be a very common technique across businesses, and scammers are only getting smarter at these attacks.

The question is:

Are you ready for this to happen to your small business? According to Microsoft, 71% of all cyberattacks target small businesses. What you can do today to mitigate these risks is to enable Multi-Factor Authentication across company devices and implement cybersecurity awareness and training programs. MFA, cyber education and vigilance are critical. i3 Business Solutions takes our customers' security seriously and will continue our improvements and education surrounding security.

If you missed us last month, watch our recent webinar here on password management and the importance of multi-factor authentication today.