With a Parade of fancy fraud cases centered on Wall Street so much in Vogue, here is Chatter about a swindle lacking Glamour but still possessing a certain amount of Allure. A man not a New Yorker nicked Condé Nast, the magazine publishing empire full of Self-esteem, for $8 million simply by sending one email.
But the rich folks who own Condé Nast–the uber-billionaire brothers of Si and Donald Newhouse–got Lucky; the loot was retrieved largely intact.
There’s a big cautionary tale in this for accounts payable departments everywhere, be they north, south, east or W.
The Details are set out for all to see in a civil lawsuit filed extremely quietly last week in Manhattan federal court not by Condé Nast or its parent, Advance Publications, but by the local U.S. Attorney’s Office acting on their behalf. The named defendants are two sums of money–$7,870,530.02 and $47,137.91, to be exact–that until federal investigators intervened had been sitting in accounts at an obscure bank branch in Texas. Technically, the feds, alleging wire fraud, filed a forfeiture action, presumably as a step toward returning the stash to Condé Nast.
http://blogs.forbes.com/williampbarrett/2011/04/03/conde-nast-paid-8-million-to-scammer-who-sent-one-email/?partner=contextstory