Victim claims breach of procedures, carelessness

Sep 17, 2016 21:05 GMT  ·  By

Tillage Commodities Fund, a US investment firm, is suing SS&C Technologies, a Wall Street technology firm, after the latter lost $6 million of the former's money, forcing it to shut down operations temporarily, CNBC reports.

Tillage claims that an SS&C employee broke procedures after he received an email asking him to release Tillage funds, which he then transferred to accounts under the control of Chinese hackers.

This happened multiple times, with the scammers requesting as much as $3 million in one single transfer, without SS&C verifying the transaction with a Tillage representative. In some cases, the funds were released mere minutes after the email arrived at the SS&C employee.

Tillage claims in a lawsuit filed last week that it had to temporarily shut down investment operations due to a lack of funds.

SS&C provides investment management software and services and has a market valuation of around $6 billion.

SS&C is not the first, nor will it be the last company to fall to this kind of email scams, which are called BEC (Business Email Compromise) or whaling attacks.

At the end of August, Leoni, the world's fourth largest vendor of wires and electrical cables, suffered a similar incident, losing €40 million ($44.6 million).

In May, the CEO of FACC, an Austrian manufacturer of airplane parts, was fired after his company lost €52.8 million ($56.79 million) in a similar email scam.