Documented social engineering incidents targeting the retail & e-commerce sector, sourced and fact-checked.
Fake finance "directors" in WhatsApp groups steered 18+ US investors to NanoBit, a crypto platform that never traded. The SEC won a $5.5M default judgment.
DocumentedCensys traced a USPS 'package awaiting action' smishing kit to 682 lookalike sites that streamed card numbers as victims typed. How it worked and how to tell.
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.
DocumentedTwo Scottish small businesses lost £31,000 and over £5,000 after callers impersonating bank fraud-team staff talked owners into wiring money.
DocumentedTV investigative reporters filmed Rite Aid pharmacy dumpsters nationwide overflowing with readable prescription labels.
DocumentedP&G-hired competitive-intelligence contractors obtained confidential Unilever hair-care information from discarded garbage before P&G self-disclosed the operation, fired three employees, and settled with Unilever in September 2001.
DocumentedA tech-support operator used fake Microsoft/Apple security pop-ups to scare consumers, often older Americans, into calling an India-based support line that sold bogus multi-year tech-support packages, resulting in a partially suspended $4.9M FTC judgment plus a separate DOJ prosecution and prison sentence for the operator.
DocumentedA Mattel finance executive wired $3M to China on a forged email from her brand-new CEO, and the company clawed it back within days thanks to a Chinese bank holiday and an FBI letter.
DocumentedA civil complaint alleges that a retired New Jersey man lost $390,000 in two days after a fake Norton/PayPal refund call escalated into a bogus PNC "mistaken deposit" story that induced him to wire savings to a gold dealer and collect the coins in person.
DocumentediSpoof was a UK-run, Bitcoin-paid website that let fraudsters display a real bank's number and capture the codes victims keyed in. In the UK alone, prosecutors traced £43 million in fraud to the site. The judge put the worldwide figure nearer £100 million. Police took the server down on November 8, 2022. Six months later its administrator, Tejay Fletcher, got 13 years and 4 months.
DocumentedFIN7 (Carbanak) mailed USPS packages containing BadUSB hardware implants to HR, IT, and executive staff at US retail, restaurant, and hotel companies, aiming to trigger automatic malware installation the moment a curious employee plugged the device in; the one package researchers recovered carried a forged Best Buy gift-card letter, a brand the FBI never named.
DocumentedDOJ prosecutions of FIN7 members Fedir Hladyr, Andrii Kolpakov, and Denys Iarmak produced guilty pleas and prison sentences. The records describe the fake Combi Security recruitment front; separately reported FBI attribution links FIN7 to later malicious-USB mailings.
Research/advisoryIn 2025 the FBI, FTC and USPIS warned of unordered packages with QR codes that lead to phishing sites or malware. How the brushing 2.0 scam works.
DocumentedIn August 2023, Clorox says, someone phoned its outsourced Cognizant help desk pretending to be two different employees. Agents reset their passwords and MFA, phone number for SMS codes included, without checking who was calling. Operations were disrupted for weeks. Clorox wants $380 million from Cognizant. That's a claim, not a proven loss, and a March 25, 2026 ruling let three of its four claims go ahead.
DocumentedFraudsters spoofed Barclays' real phone number and hold music, posed as the bank's fraud team in a two-caller vishing script, and talked a 70-something UK jeweller into installing AnyDesk on his business PC, draining GBP 48,451.78 from two accounts. Professional Jeweller reported that the victim's law firm later recovered GBP 25,650 from Barclays.
DocumentedIn 2022, 0ktapus texted staff fake IT alerts linking to Okta lookalikes, stealing 9,931 logins and MFA codes. Twilio was breached; Cloudflare's keys held.
Social Engineering Examples