Commodities Trading Firm Wires $17.2 Million to Phishing Scammer

The Scoular Co., one of Omaha’s most established firms, was duped out of millions in an international email swindle.

Scoular controller Keith McMurtry wired the money in installments to a bank in China after receiving emails from a purported colleague ordering him to do so.

The orders turned out to be fraudulent.

The emails claimed to be from Scoular Chief Executive Chuck Elsea. They were really from impostors using email addresses set up in Germany, France and Israel and computer servers in Moscow.

Scoular was ranked as the 55th-largest privately held U.S. company by Forbes magazine last year, with about $6.2 billion in annual revenue.

The emails that looked like they were from Elsea were sent from an email address that wasn’t his normal company one.

The first email instructed McMurtry to wire $780,000, which an FBI statement says he did. The next day, McMurtry was told to wire $7 million, which he also did. Three days later, another email was sent to McMurtry, instructing him to wire $9.4 million. McMurtry again complied.

The first two emails from the bogus CEO swore the recipient to secrecy over a blockbuster international deal.

“I need you to take care of this,” read emails from the party pretending to be Elsea. “For the last months we have been working, in coordination and under the supervision of the SEC, on acquiring a Chinese company … This is very sensitive, so please only communicate with me through this email, in order for us not to infringe SEC regulations.”

The second email attempted to create a further layer of trust by instructing McMurtry to contact a certain employee of the company’s accounting firm for details on where to wire the money. McMurtry later received an email purportedly from the employee of the real accounting firm, instructing him to wire the money to Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, a real bank in China with many branch offices and international clients.

The FBI said McMurtry “was not suspicious of the three wire transfer requests” because there was an element of truth to it all:

» Scoular had been discussing expanding in China.

» McMurtry was at the time working on the annual audit with the company’s outside accounting firm, and the email address used by that accounting firm’s fake employee looked like it was from a valid email address.

» The phone number provided for the accounting firm employee was answered by someone who identified himself by the name referred to in the CEO’s email.