Documented social engineering incidents targeting the nonprofit & ngo sector, sourced and fact-checked.
Attackers hijacked a staff email account and used fake solar-panel invoices to trick the US charity into wiring $997,400 to Japan.
ConfirmedA compromised email address was used to redirect a $30,750 solar-panel-installation payment from a Wheeling.
ConfirmedA four-man Manhattan fraud ring compromised a nonprofit CFO's and a portfolio company employee's business email accounts to redirect $3.49M and $2.0M.
ConfirmedA trusted, decades-respected Kansas community bank CEO was groomed over WhatsApp into a crypto "pig butchering" scam.
ConfirmedDow Chemical and Sasol paid PR firms who subcontracted a private intelligence firm to run over 120 dumpster-diving raids on Greenpeace's DC offices.
ConfirmedRussian GRU officers spoofed Google security-alert emails to phish 300+ Democratic campaign staff, stealing 50,000+ of John Podesta's emails.
ConfirmedA compromised Constant Contact account let Russia-linked Nobelium send USAID-spoofed phishing emails to 150-350 government and NGO organizations.
ConfirmedIn late December 2012, attackers rigged the Council on Foreign Relations website to silently exploit an Internet Explorer zero-day and drop malware.
ConfirmedA single cybercriminal used Anthropic's Claude Code as an autonomous operator to breach ~17 organizations and generate psychologically targeted.
Social Engineering Examples