Documented social engineering incidents targeting the manufacturing & industrial sector, sourced and fact-checked.
A phishing email tricked Unatrac's CFO into surrendering his Office365 credentials on a fake Microsoft login page; the attacker then used the live CFO mailbox to send about 15 fake-invoice wire requests over nine days, draining nearly $11 million overseas.
DocumentedTarget's 2013 breach began with malware emailed to a small HVAC contractor. 40M cards and 70M records exposed. What's known, what's myth, and what it cost.
DocumentedFraudsters posing as Tecnimont's group CEO, other executives, and a fictitious Swiss lawyer used spoofed emails and a staged series of conference calls about a fake confidential China acquisition to talk the Indian subsidiary's head into wiring $18.6 million to Hong Kong accounts in November 2018.
DocumentedAdvance Machine Company's West Coast sales manager repeatedly rifled Tennant Company's sealed, covered dumpster in California to steal sales leads.
DocumentedA European subsidiary of Toyota parts maker Toyota Boshoku transferred up to about 4 billion yen (~$37M) to criminals in August 2019 after acting on fraudulent payment instructions; the audited accounts later booked a 3,393 million yen loss.
DocumentedA phishing attack resulted in disclosure of 2015 W-2 data for several thousand US employees, exposing SSNs and earnings to an unauthorized party.
DocumentedA 12-person ring watched hacked inboxes for big payments, then redirected them with fake emails. Trial evidence put losses above $25M. Nine now convicted.
DocumentedImpostors posing as Scoular's CEO and a senior figure at its audit firm convinced the controller a secret China acquisition was underway, and he wired $17.2M in three tranches to a Shanghai account.
DocumentedA small Columbus, Ohio public materials manufacturer disclosed in a February 2026 SEC 8-K that it lost $898,325 to an "imposter scam executed in conjunction with bank fraud," recovering only $336,299 by the following quarter despite same-day bank, FBI, and insurer engagement.
DocumentedA Pune CFO sent Rs 56 lakh after a Microsoft Teams message from a fake CEO profile. A second Rs 1.5 crore request made her call the real CEO. What happened.
DocumentedEvaldas Rimasauskas posed as supplier Quanta Computer to get Google and Facebook to wire about $122M. How the fake-invoice scam worked and what came back.
DocumentedChinese state-linked hackers used spear-phishing links and an unpatched Internet Explorer zero-day to breach Google, Adobe, and dozens of other US tech and defense firms in a campaign that stole intellectual property, targeted Gmail accounts of human-rights activists, and led Google to publicly confront China and stop censoring its search results.
DocumentedOrion S.A. lost about $60M in 2024 when an employee was tricked into wiring money to criminals. What Orion confirmed, what came back, and how to stop it.
DocumentedFraudsters swapped a former MP's number in his company's phone but kept his photo, then ordered Rs 7.68 crore in transfers on WhatsApp. How it worked.
DocumentedA Houston- and California-based ring spoofed or compromised business emails to trick four companies and one New Jersey township into wiring over $2.5 million meant for real creditors into shell-company "money mule" accounts, which the defendants then laundered through layers of bank transfers; a mule-account operator drew the case's longest sentence in July 2025, months before two more defendants were sentenced in February 2026.
DocumentedFraudsters impersonating Leoni AG's senior executives tricked the German cable manufacturer's Romanian subsidiary finance team into wiring roughly EUR 40 million (about US$44.6 million) to attacker-controlled accounts in August 2016.
DocumentedA fake email posing as DTC gave JE Cleantech false wire instructions for its 2026 dividend, diverting US$794,934 and delaying shareholder payments.
Reported/allegedJLR's 2025 cyber attack halted production for five weeks. Early reports blamed help-desk vishing; JLR's CISO later denied it. What's claimed vs what's known.
Reported/allegedGreenpeace alleged in a civil suit, dismissed in both forums without any finding on the merits, that Dow Chemical and CONDEA Vista Company (bought by Sasol Ltd. in 2001 and sued as Sasol North America, Inc.) had, through two public relations firms, subcontracted the private intelligence firm Beckett Brown International to run repeated trash-collection raids on its Washington DC offices between 1998 and 2000, one subcontractor being a District of Columbia police officer engaged off duty and expected to use his badge to reach a locked trash enclosure.
DocumentedTwo New Jersey men ran US "laptop farms" and shell companies that let North Korean IT workers use the stolen identities of real Americans to hold remote jobs at more than 100 US firms, generating over $5 million for the DPRK regime and enabling theft of ITAR-controlled defense data before both were sentenced to federal prison in April 2026.
DocumentedAnthropic says a suspected Chinese state group conned Claude Code with a fake pentest story and let it run most of an espionage campaign. Critics doubt it.
DocumentedA fraudster posing as AFGlobal's CEO, backed by a fake KPMG "attorney," pressured the accounting director into wiring $480,000 to a Chinese bank; a follow-up $18M ask blew the scheme.
Social Engineering Examples