In plain terms
Never wire money on the strength of an email alone — not ours, not your bank's, not your client's. Call the person on a number you already had, and confirm the account details out loud. This is the single cheapest control against the most expensive fraud we see.
Why this exists
Wire fraud is the most common way our clients lose large amounts of money quickly, and it almost never involves anything being hacked in the way people picture. Someone reads a mailbox, waits for a real transaction, and sends a message that looks exactly like the one you were expecting — same thread, same signature, same tone, different account number.
The money is usually gone within hours and is rarely recoverable. Insurance frequently does not cover it, because no system was breached and nothing was stolen — someone was persuaded.
What to do before every wire
Call your contact on a number you already had. Establish that number at the start of the relationship and write it down somewhere outside your email. Never use a phone number that appears in the message asking you to send money, however legitimate it looks.
Never wire funds before that call. No genuine counterparty will object to a verification call, and anyone who pressures you to skip it is telling you something.
Read the numbers aloud and have them read back. Routing number, account number, beneficiary name, bank name. Do not confirm by reading the email back to yourself.
Be sharply more careful when something changes. A message saying banking details have changed, that a payment is urgent, or that the usual contact is unavailable is the pattern in nearly every case we see. Treat a change of account details as a red flag on its own.
Confirm the first payment to any new account separately. Send a small amount, confirm it arrived with the person on the phone, then send the balance.
What to be suspicious of
- A change to banking details arriving by email, however plausible the explanation
- Urgency, secrecy, or a request to bypass your normal approvals
- A reply that arrives from a nearly-identical address, or a thread where someone has quietly been removed
- A request that arrives while a key person is travelling or out of the office
- An invoice that is correct in every detail except the account
If you think something is wrong
Stop and call us straight away on the number you already have for us, before sending anything.
If a wire has already gone out, call your bank immediately and ask them to initiate a recall — speed is the only thing that matters, and the window is measured in hours. Then report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, which is the channel through which wires are sometimes frozen.
Tell us as well, so we can check whether a mailbox in your environment has been accessed and close it off before it is used again.
What we will and will not do
We will never send you new banking details by email alone, and we will never ask you to wire funds urgently without a call.
If you receive a message that appears to come from us asking you to do either of those things, it did not come from us. Call us on your existing number and tell us.