In 2019, Obinwanne Okeke (Invictus Obi) opened the eyes of many, especially Nigerians, to the danger of Business Email Compromise (BEC), after he was arrested by the FBI for facilitating cyberfraud valued at $11 million through compromised email.

It is 2022, and BEC has remained a high source of successful internet fraud, with yearly upticks amounting to billions of dollars. This situation is worsening even though the FBI since 2019, has intensified warning to internet users, providing security tips that will protect individuals from falling victim.

ZDNet, in a recent security report below, lists a six-point advice from the FBI that will help both companies and individuals keep their email safe and avoid falling victims.

The FBI has warned that BEC fraud costs businesses around the world $43 billion in losses during the period between June 2016 and December 2021.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Center (IC3) logged a whopping 241,206 complaints in the four-and-a-half-year period, with losses totaling $43 billion, according to a new public service announcement.

BEC fraud was the biggest category of cybercrime by financial losses in 2021, according to IC3. BEC cost businesses $2.4 billion in 2021, up from $1.8 billion in 2020.

US losses recorded by the FBI are much larger than losses reported by victims in non-US jurisdictions. Between October 2013 and December 2021, 116,401 victims reported total losses of $14.8 billion. In that period, 5,260 non-US victims reported losses of $1.27 billion.

BEC is a global problem. The scam has been reported in all 50 US states and by victims in 177 countries. Meanwhile, over 140 countries have received fraudulent transfers, according to IC3. However, banks located in Thailand and Hong Kong were the primary destination for the funds, followed by China, Mexico and Singapore.

BEC scams are considered a sophisticated ruse that targets business and individuals who are duped into transferring funds to the scammer’s account under the belief they are performing a legitimate transaction.

The FBI believes the pandemic and the shift to everything online spurred a 65% growth in BEC fraud losses between July 2019 and December 2021.

“Between July 2019 and December 2021, there was a 65% increase in identified global exposed losses, meaning the dollar loss that includes both actual and attempted loss in United States dollars,” IC3 notes.

“This increase can be partly attributed to the restrictions placed on normal business practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused more workplaces and individuals to conduct routine business virtually.”

It also reports an uptick in complaints involving cryptocurrency transfers.

The value of cryptocurrency today had a market cap of $3 trillion in November, up from just $14 billion five years ago, the US secretary of the Treasury recently noted.

The two main forms of BEC involving cryptocurrency were direct transfers, just like traditional BEC fraud, while the second involved a “second hop”, usually to a cryptocurrency exchange. In both situations, the victim is unaware that the funds are being sent to be converted to a cryptocurrency, says IC3.

Second hop transfers often involve tricking the victim into providing identity documents, such as a driver’s license or passport, which the attacker uses to open cryptocurrency wallets in the victim’s name. In 2020, IC3 received reports of $10 million in losses from victims involving cryptocurrency. By 2021, the value of cryptocurrency-related losses ballooned to $40 million.

FBI advice for protecting yourself includes:

• Use two-factor authentication to verify requests for changes in account information.
• Ensure the URL in emails is associated with the business or individual it claims to be from.
• Be alert to fake hyperlinks that may contain misspellings of the actual domain name.
• Avoid supplying login credentials or personal information via email.
• Verify the email address used to send emails, especially when using a mobile or handheld device, by ensuring the sender’s address appears to match who it is coming from.
• Ensure the settings in employees’ computers allow full email extensions to be viewed.
• Monitor your personal financial accounts on a regular basis for irregularities.

Building a structure for your business is important – no doubt – but maybe not quite as easy for every entrepreneur. Some managers and founders even think they have a structure, only to find out at some point that they do not. Or, that they had built the structure around a person – most likely themselves.

The first test to know if you have an independent business structure is to ask the question; “If I am absent, can the business go on without me?” In addition, replace your name with each of your staff’s names one after the other, and ask the same question. If the answer is no, for one or more persons, then you may have been building your structure around a person. That is the reason some founders travel, only to return and find out nothing productive was done in their absence. Or an employee resigns, and it suddenly seems like the business is falling apart.

Here are 3 things you can do to gradually build a business structure. It is an acronym I call D-D-M, Document, Delegate, and Monitor. It works even if you have a small business, medium-scale enterprise, or large business. It does not really matter how long you have been in business. You could start it from your first day in business, or at whatever point you come to the understanding that you need a business structure.

First is to document all your processes and daily activities, possibly starting from when you are running the business alone. What are those problems you have to solve every day? and what are the processes? Why is your presence necessary around the office? What exact need are you meeting and how do you meet it? Once you have this list, write out in detail the processes you take to achieve them.

If your business has grown beyond the early stage, and you now have a small team of two, three, or more employees, have them do the same thing. This is the process of creating a Standard Operating Procedure document which can become your business manual (if you are okay with such a term). What this achieves for you as a small business owner is that you can easily see what each staff is doing and how they are contributing to the team productivity, and you can make the necessary adjustments to ensure that you are optimally utilizing your team. With this, anyone can go through the document and understand the exact way to carry out the tasks in your company without asking too many questions.

The second stage is to delegate. If you are trying to separate the business and ensure that it runs smoothly in your absence, you should try delegating some of those things you are solely responsible for. Instead of having your team running to you every time they have a challenge, delegate some of the problems to another staff to resolve them. You will need to brief him or her on what to do, and possibly get them to use the document earlier prepared. You will always need people to run your business no matter how solid your business structure is. Learn to employ quality people, delegate responsibilities to them, and trust them to deliver.

The third part is to monitor. You cannot just delegate a task and then leave the person to figure things out on his own. You will need to closely monitor at the beginning and make sure that they are doing it right. You can also correct it as you go, till they are able to fix things without your supervision.

Ensure that you are getting the results you want, and if you are not, keep making adjustments until you do.

The stereotype that lawyers are liars seems to be a universal one.

To a layman, all lawyers are liars; they tell lies, twist the truth, cut corners, and do all sorts of unethical things just to present and win their case.

Paradoxically, the Lawyers’ code of conduct and ethics of the law profession abhors any form of dishonesty from lawyers, every lawyer is expected to be an upright member of the society and an upright member of the bar and expected to be a person of integrity and honesty, and any lawyer who is caught engaging in an unethical practice risk getting disbarred or suspended from the law practice. 

The stereotypical opinion that lawyers are liars only originates from laymen who have no idea of what lawyers do in the courtroom and have a narrow view of what the word “truth” means. 

To buttress this, there is nothing like a universal truth, what you hold as a universal truth is only a dogma, like religious and cultural dogmatic principles. When a purported truth is forced down on people to be incontrovertible and universal, it becomes a dogma. Dogma itself is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. A dogma is an adulterated version of truth which cannot be said to be a truth in the strict sense of it.  

Truth is truth to you based on your perspective. What is true to Mr. A may not be true to Mr. B. Therefore, truth, just like morality, is subjective and all based on an individual’s perspective or point of view. 

One of the dictionary definitions of truth says truth is a belief that is accepted as true. This means that whatever belief an individual accepts to be his truth will stand as his or her own truth and if another person accepts an opposite of that to be his own truth then that will also stand as the another person’s truth and both will be true to them. 

So there can be two or more truths. Just like the numeric figure 6 can be said to be 9 and it will all be true, it depends on the perspective you are viewing it from. 

Now you see why lawyers and the court do not concern themselves with the truth; because the truth is subjective and based on a person’s perspective. The court is interested in the facts and evidence in the case and not what is the truth. Lawyers also make their case based on facts, irrefutable facts, and evidence and not truth. 

This is why when lawyers argue, they may be accused of lying by laymen because they try to present their argument from a different perspective which may be totally different from what the public may hold to be true. 

The accusation that lawyers are liars because they defend criminals and the opinion that they twist the truth to get the criminal off the hook is just a stereotype from narrow minded individuals.

What really does happen is that when a person is accused of a crime the general principle is for the accusers to prove that the suspect really did commit the crime. The job of the defense lawyer is to make sure the accuser or prosecution prove that the suspect committed the crime he’s been accused of, when the accuser cannot prove then the defense lawyer will ask the court to discharge and acquit the suspect since the accuser cannot make his case, this general principle of law is called “he who alleges must prove”. 

Putting this in a hypothetical scenario, when Mr. A is accused of committing a crime, the defense lawyer to Mr. A is neither denying nor corroborating that Mr. A did commit the crime, what the court expects is that the accusers or the prosecutor of Mr. A should prove by presenting facts and evidence that are beyond every reasonable doubt or atom of doubt that Mr. A committed the crime. 

The court will not ask Mr. A if it is true he did commit the crime he is being accused of, the court will not also ask Mr . A to defend himself against the accusations, rather it is the duty of the Mr. A’s accusers to prove that the suspect committed the crime they are accusing him off. This is the general rule, although there are exceptions to it.

If the accusers are unable to prove what they are alleging, Mr. A will be discharged and acquitted, the defense lawyer did not lie or twist the truth to get his client discharged, rather Mr. A was discharged because of the inability of his accusers to prove their case. 

To this extent, the lawyer is not lying, he is just engaging the rules of logic to make his case and importantly, a lawyer is expected to exhibit the highest form of honesty and integrity under any given circumstance, so the stereotype that lawyers are liars is quite ridiculous. 

That reminds me, if you’re dealing with international legal matters, it’s important to be aware of issues like an arrest warrant Dubai, which can have serious consequences if you face extradition.

Lawyers are not liars, lawyers don’t lie.