The Tokyo-headquartered firm, which owns the Financial Times, revealed in a brief statement that an employee of its US subsidiary made the crucial mistake.
“In late September 2019, an employee of Nikkei America, Inc. … transferred approximately $29m Nikkei America funds based on fraudulent instructions by a malicious third party who purported to be a management executive of Nikkei,” it noted.
“Shortly after, Nikkei America recognized that it was likely that it had been subject to a CEO Fraud, and Nikkei America immediately retained lawyers to confirm the underlying facts while filing a damage report with the investigation authorities in the US and Hong Kong. Currently, we are taking immediate measures to preserve and recover the funds that have been transferred, and taking measures to fully cooperate with the investigations.”
This could have easily been prevented with new-school security awareness training. Test if your employees would answer a spoofed social engineering email from "the boss" here for free. Full story here.