JOHOR BARU: A manufacturing company lost RM464,400 after its business email was hacked.
The company's 44-year-old accountant lodged a police report on Tuesday when she realised the bank account given via a purported supplier's email did not belong to the real supplier.
Johor police chief Commissioner M. Kumar said the company had purchased RM464,000 worth of palm oil in mid-February from its regular supplier.
An email was then sent by the purported supplier instructing the accountant to transfer the payment to a second bank account.
The accountant followed the instruction without question as she had regularly contacted the supplier via email and they had a long-standing business relationship.
After the payment was transferred, she received another email from the "supplier" who offered another batch of palm oil at an absurdly low price.
The discounted price, way below the market value, aroused the accountant's suspicion and she checked the email address against earlier emails received from the supplier.
It was then she realised there were some discrepancies.
Kumar said police investigations revealed that the business email was compromised, and the case was classified as cheating under Section 420 of the Penal Code.
Johor police commercial crime department statistics revealed that 719 commercial crime cases had been reported since the beginning of the year until Feb 17. This was a surge of 59 per cent, or 266 cases, in the same period last year.
Kumar said of the 719 commercial crime cases, the highest was online fraud-related at 651 cases.
Between January and Feb 17, police recorded a 91 per cent surge or more than RM33,88 million in losses compared to about RM17.75 million losses in the same period last year.