ALERT: Internet and Impersonation fraud utilising the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and PwC Legal LLP brands

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and PwC Legal LLP have become aware of a fraud attempting to extract funds from corporates by impersonating both a senior executive within the corporate and an employee from PwC Legal LLP.    

The method adopted by the fraudsters is:

1. A member of the corporate’s finance team receives an email, similar to the one below, purporting to be an internal email from a senior executive such as the Managing Director/CEO.

“From: [Name of CEO/MD] (mailto:c.[ABC]@outlook.com)
To: [Member of Finance team/FD/CFO]
Subject: File C-[ABC]

I have assigned you to manage file C-[ABC].

This is a strictly confidential financial operation, which takes priority over other tasks.

Have you already been contacted by [Employee name and Title] from Pricewaterhouse?

This is very sensitive, we have to make sure not to infringe FSA regulations.

Regards,

[CEO/MD]”

2. The finance team member then receives a call shortly afterwards from an individual, claiming to be the specified employee from Pricewaterhouse. This individual instructs the finance team member to make a transfer of funds to an account to be supplied.

3. The finance team member then receives an email from this ‘employee’ using an email address masquerading as a bona fide email address asking him to make payments to a specified bank account and to send confirmations to the fake email address once this has occurred.

4. Should the finance team member reply to any of the emails, the fraudster will continue the email chain possibly supplying additional details of further bank accounts to which payments should be made.

The following domains have so far been associated with this scam (although there may be others): …@pwc-ukglobal.com and …@pwc-office.com. Please note these domains are fake and not linked to either PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP or PwC Legal LLP and any communications using these domains should be treated with suspicion.

We recommend that you speak with your finance teams to ensure they are aware of this fraud.   Should you be the subject of an attempted fraud, you may wish to that report the incident to Action Fraud (www.actionfraud.police.uk) who will forward details to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau for collation and analysis.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and PwC Legal LLP