Scammers use spoofed emails to make off with an alarming amount of wrongfully obtained cash. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 20,000 complaints of business email compromises, representing more than $1.2 billion in losses last year alone. See Federal Bureau of Investigation, “2018 Internet Crime Report,” https://pdf.ic3.gov/2018_IC3Report.pdf.

“Spoofed” emails are used to induce victims to perform actions such as changing payment information to redirect the transfer funds away from the lawful recipient to the scheme’s perpetrator: “the practice of disguising commercial email to make the email appear to come from an address from which it actually did not originate. Spoofing involves placing the “From” or “Reply to” lines, or in other portions of email messages, an email address other than the actual sender’s address, without the consent or authorization of the user of the email address whose address is spoofed,” see Karvaly v. eBay, 245 F.R.D. 71 (E.D.N.Y. 2007). In short, the scammer sends an email disguised to appear as if it is from someone the recipient thinks they can trust. The scammer may build a rapport with the victim or bolster their credibility with a follow-up phone call. Ultimately, the scammer may induce the victim to wire money to the scammer’s bank account and then vanish.