As I am sure that you are aware, wire fraud is prevalent in our industry – probably due to the monetary size of the transactions that we work on, which are typically in the millions and tens of millions of dollars.
IATS is very careful in developing and following policies in an effort to prevent fraud from occurring in transactions, most of which involved wire fraud. Even with our efforts to prevent wire fraud, the “fraudsters” seem to keep finding new ways to attempt “wire around” (no pun intended) the issues that we have seen in the past and have developed new fraud tactics.
I wanted to give all of you a few examples of some of the fraud we have seen here at IATS.
One of the most terrifying incidents happened personally to me mid-December, which of course was a very busy time for all of us. On the 1st of December I had sent an email to a buyer of an airplane asking for their wire transfer instructions so we could return a deposit. There were quite a few people in their organization copied on the email as well as their counsel and aircraft broker. On December 13th I received an email purportedly from their CFO with wire transfer instructions. All of the email addresses on the email had been spoofed with a 1 letter difference in each one from their actual emails, but in less than 2 weeks they had actually opened up a bank account in what appeared to be the name of the company that had sent the funds to us, however, the name on the account was missing 1 letter. The email even had their logo on it and looked exactly like the ones I had received previously from him. I figured the name on the account with one letter missing (which I noticed right away) was simply a typo. Of course, we would not have wired to that account without verbally verifying the wiring instructions with the CFO but in fact, we had already returned the funds a couple of weeks earlier. I called the CFO and told him I was confused by his email because we had already returned the funds and he said “what email?”. Of course, he had not sent me any email and we then discovered that it was all fictitious. Fortunately, I called the phone number that I knew for this gentleman and not the phone number that the bad guy had put on the email.
Another example of attempted fraud we experienced earlier in the year was that someone was trying to sell an airplane that they did not in fact own. I am not exactly sure what the scam was going to be but I happened to know who owned this aircraft and that it was not for sale. I reached out to them to verify the plane was not for sale and was able to let the potential buyer know that this aircraft was not for sale.
I am sure some of you have gotten emails purportedly from me (spoofed with again 1 letter changed or added) stating that we had purchased another title company and therefore our wire transfer instructions changed. I can’t tell you how many people either came up to me personally at industry events or emailed me to tell me congratulations! Of course, we have not purchased any other title company and our wire transfer instructions have not changed. Even one of the organizations we belong to had been communicating with this fictitious person (through the spoofed email address) and when I got a news blast from that organization announcing the purchase of the new title company by IATS, I immediately picked up the phone and called to say where did you get this information and why would you send this out without my approval? She told me I had emailed her approval on such and such a date. She then realized that the email address was incorrect, but the changes are so slight, it is very difficult to see sometimes.
In an effort to try to thwart some of this mischievousness, we have filed UDRP disputes, which is an online arbitration process with domain registrars of the fictitious domain names. We have been successful with our disputes and the domain hosts have turned many of these fictitious domains over to us. It seems that it slowed down the traffic for a bit, but the bad guys are back at it again.
If any of you are interested in pursuing this type of remedy, I will give you a link so you can read more about it:
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en
Be vigilant everyone ~ You cannot be too careful. See you in Key Largo!
Joan Roberts
Vice President
Insured Aircraft Title Service LLC