What would it take for a sophisticated cybercriminal to convince your financial advisor that they were talking to you? Mark Hurley, CEO of Digital Privacy and Protection, shares a real story of a $2 million wire fraud that combined a compromised device, unprotected social media, and a cloned voice. The clip breaks down each step of the attack in plain language. If you’d like to view the full webinar, you can watch it here. 

Transcript:

Mark Hurley:

There’s a family had been dreaming of buying an apartment in Paris.

Talking to their advisor about it.

They’re getting ready to go to Paris to find the apartment, been discussing it. Unfortunately, on an earlier trip, one of the family members had plugged a device into a public charging station. Ironically, it was at JFK.

And it got a virus into it. That virus let the bad guys access the family’s email. And with artificial intelligence software, they quickly were able to read the emails and see this was coming up.

And so they waited until the family got to Paris. And after they’d been there for a couple of days, the bad guys changed the email password.

And then they sent an email to the advisor saying, we found the apartment, we need $2 million!

The advisor, being a good fiduciary, said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we have to do a confirmatory call, we gotta make sure that this is legit. The bad guy said, no problem. Why?

One, the family had not protected their social media, and that allowed the bad guys to do two things. One, they could download the videos and clone the voices, but also.

They knew a tremendous amount was going on in the day-to-day life of the family, so they could answer all kinds of questions. Additionally, the family did not have a robust password or a PIN on their telecom account, so they went in and diverted where the cell signal was sent.

Now, what wound up happening was the advisor did a 45-minute call with who they thought was the client, and it wasn’t. Bye-bye, $2 million.

Lake Road Advisors (LRA) is a virtual wealth management firm headquartered in Corning, NY, with offices in Ithaca, NY, and Vancouver, WA. Founded by Paul Sydlansky, CFP®, in 2016, it serves successful couples planning their next chapter—whether that’s retirement, part-time work, or a less demanding second act. Paul has worked in the financial services industry for 25+ years. Prior to founding Lake Road Advisors, he worked at Morgan Stanley in Manhattan for 13 years, where he was a senior-level manager within the Institutional Equities Department. In 2018, he was named to Investopedia’s Top 100 Financial Advisors list. Paul received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Marist College and holds an MBA from New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Paul is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the XY Planning Network. They can be reached by phone at the Corning, NY office at (607) 438-2914, Ithaca, NY office at (607) 463-8400, or Vancouver, WA office at (607) 292-2172 or at the firm’s website at https://www.lakeroadadvisors.com/