Awareness of CEO fraud and impersonation frauds

IPA Insolvency Practitioner newsletter AML Digest, November 2022

Contents

• David Holland, Chief Inspector and IPA Money Laundering Reporting Officer
• AML 2021/22 Annual Report and 2022/23 Sector Risk Assessment
• Amendments to the 2017 Money Laundering Regulations
• SARs Reporter Booklet
• Ongoing monitoring and review of a business relationship – Reg 28(11) Money Laundering Regulations 2017
• Accountancy AML Supervisors’ Group alerts
• Sanctions
• SAR Reform Programme
• SAR Glossary Codes
• Renewals
• Supervisory work for 2022/23
• ISS AML training and IPA Learning

Impersonation frauds remain a risk for all firms, and insolvency firms are not immune to the risk. In particular, CEO fraud is a simple way for criminals to obtain funds from a company. All firms should be aware of how a CEO fraud works, and the diagram below provides information on how this is carried out.

Being aware of the vulnerabilities allows you to build in robust policies on IT security and emails and also have clear policies for your cashiering teams on reviewing and checking when changes in bank details for payments are received. Action Fraud have published the following article on CEO fraud which lists some simple actions you can take to help defend against falling victim: Action Fraud warning after serious rise in CEO fraud.

Remember you can sign up to Action Fraud and use their reporting tool to report fraud and cyber crime.