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.