The big Luxembourg-based chemicals and manufacturing giant Orion SA is notifying US regulators that it might lose out on almost $60 million if it became the target of a criminal wire fraud scheme.
The massive chemicals and manufacturing company Orion SA, based in Luxembourg, is informing US regulators that it would miss out on approximately $60 million as a result of becoming the subject of a criminal wire fraud operation.
Although the phrase isn’t used specifically, the incident’s description, which was derived from the company’s Form 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), raises the possibility that it was a business email compromise (BEC) scheme.
“On August 10, 2024, Orion SA determined that a company employee, who is not a named executive officer was the target of a criminal scheme that resulted in multiple fraudulently induced outbound wire transfers to accounts controlled by unknown third parties,” according to the document.
“As a result of this incident, and if no further recoveries of transferred funds occur, the company expects to record a one-time pre-tax charge of approximately $60 million for the unrecovered fraudulent wire transfers.”
Additionally, the Form 8-K made it clear that neither a system breach nor any compromised data occurred.
Scams involving BECs are dirty business. Even more profitable than ransomware, according to statements made by the Federal Reserve earlier this year, they will cause adjusted losses of $2.9 billion in 2023 alone.
This type of phishing usually entails impersonating a reliable email address, such as a supplier to the company that the accounting department, for instance, frequently approves large money transactions from.
Generally, the email address is kept discreet; maybe a single character is off. In order to make the fraud even more plausible, the con artists frequently conduct in-depth research on both the target and their supplier, discovering when and how they communicate.
For instance, in January 2023, a trade union in Massachusetts was the target of similar actions. After impersonating a supplier and referencing previously discussed transactions from authentic emails between the target and true supplier, the scammers managed to fool one union employee into wiring millions of dollars to their bank accounts.
Although Orion won’t be pleased about perhaps losing the $60 million permanently, the business has recently increased its 2024 outlook in its half-year results, so this is hardly a catastrophic loss.
It significantly strengthened the net sales projections. It is now predicted to be between $1.57 billion and $1.61 billion, compared to the initial estimate of $1.46 billion to $1.54 billion. Estimates of operating profit also increased to a figure somewhere between $382.3 million and $415 million, compared to between $305.8 million and $338.5 million in the prior period.
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