Approximately $129M left corporate accounts because accountants believed the voice on the phone.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted three people for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft: Jacob Soall, 41, Sharon Hazan, 54, and Guy Sheetrit, 42. Over more than eighteen months they approached thousands of companies worldwide, and the indictment names a Rhode Island bank among the marks.
Court documents also list California and Missouri hospital systems, a Florida pet food maker, a Massachusetts mutual fund firm and a UK financial technology company.
A script built for accounts payable
Mail claiming to come from a chief executive opened each attempt, asking help on a confidential transaction. A call by phone or video followed, with AI copying the executive’s voice and sometimes their appearance. The mark was then steered to an attorney at a major law firm, a role the group could also play.
Accounts payable sat in the crosshairs, and those staff are least placed to challenge a request that arrives with correct names, correct deal language and a familiar voice.
Why voice stopped being evidence
For years a live call was the out-of-band check that broke business email compromise. A clone convincing enough to talk over a wire transfer retires that control, and building one takes only a few seconds of conference audio or a public earnings call.
Controls that still hold
Callback verification works only when the number comes from an internal directory, not the message. Payment changes should force a second signer on a separate channel, and finance staff should hold explicit authority to stop a payment without an executive’s permission.
Hazan had a 2008 fraud conviction in New York, court records show, for conspiring to commit bank fraud, and police picked up all three between June and September.
