CEO-Fraud / 'Urgent Wire' Business Email Compromise
A scammer poses as your CEO or a senior executive and emails an employee to urgently wire money or buy gift cards for a confidential deal — the request is fake and the money is gone.
Think a message like this reached you? You can check it right now.
What this scam is
In business email compromise, a fraudster impersonates a company executive (via a spoofed or hacked email account) and asks an employee in finance or admin to make an urgent, confidential wire transfer or buy gift cards, often citing a secret acquisition, a vendor payment, or the boss being 'in a meeting.' The urgency, authority, and secrecy discourage verification. Wires are fast and hard to recover, so losses can be large. Verifying any unusual payment request by a known phone number defeats it.
What it usually looks like
- An email from the 'CEO/executive' requesting an urgent wire or gift cards.
- Secrecy ('confidential deal — don't discuss it').
- A reason they can't talk right now.
- A slightly-off sender address or reply-to.
Common warning signs
- Urgent, unusual payment requests from an executive by email.
- Pressure and secrecy discouraging verification.
- Gift-card requests from 'the boss.'
- Changed reply-to addresses or new vendor accounts.
Example wording scammers use
“I need you to wire $48,000 to this account today for a confidential acquisition. Keep this between us — I'm in meetings.”
“Please pick up $2,000 in gift cards for client rewards and send me the codes.”
These are illustrative examples written by ScamSplain, not real messages.
What the scammers want
- An urgent wire or gift cards.
- To exploit authority, urgency, and secrecy.
- To bypass normal approval controls.
What to do
- Verify any unusual payment request by calling the executive on a known number.
- Require multi-person approval and callbacks for wires and new payees.
- Distrust urgency and secrecy in payment emails.
- Never buy gift cards for 'the boss' without verifying.
What to do if you already responded
- Contact your bank immediately to attempt a wire recall.
- Report to the FBI at ic3.gov (they have a recovery process) right away.
- Alert your finance/security team and report at reportfraud.ftc.gov.