Upstate deputies recover more than $300K for scam victim

ANDERSON, S.C. (WSPA) – Once money has been wire-transferred, it’s usually unrecoverable.

But when a Williamston-based liquidation company fell victim to an online scam in July and lost more than half-a-million-dollars, the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office was able to help.

According to PIO Shale Remien, detectives helped recover more than $300,000 of the $527,000 sent to scammers, who are believed to be based overseas.

“This company was debating whether, ‘Hey, what do we do from here? Do we have to shut our doors? How do we carry on with business?’,” explained Remien.

The sheriff’s office said the liquidation company was in talks over email with a creditor, when a scammer gained unauthorized access to a creditor employee’s email account.

“[The liquidation company and its creditor] had an ongoing exchange over email about invoices,” Remien recounted.” So, this scammer goes through the email and sees how much money this company owes this other company.”

The scammers copied the creditor’s letterhead, including past information from the thread, created a new email with a fake account and added their own banking information.

“Unfortunately, the liquidation company ended up wiring [the money], and through four different wires, thousands of dollars [each],” said Remien. “A total of $527,000, that was just gone.”

After weeks of trying to get back the funds, detectives were able to do so, and the liquidation company was able to get back to business as normal.

Two wire transfers, $173,000 in total, were stopped by one bank automatically.

More than $300,000 was recovered by detectives, meaning the company was now out $26,000.

Remien said that anyone could fall victim to this type of scam because it was so elaborate. She recommended protecting your email account and verifying who is asking for your money.

“Once that money is gone, it’s very, very challenging to get back,” said Remien. “Just make sure you’re being mindful about two factor authentication), verification codes [and] things like that. So maybe scammers can’t hack into your email, but we’ve seen it before.”

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