A scam in which criminals impersonate the email accounts of chief executives has cost businesses around the globe more than $2bn in little over two years, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

根据美国联邦调查局(FBI)的说法，在两年多一点的时间里，一种由犯罪分子伪造首席执行官电子邮箱账户行骗的骗局，已导致全球企业损失逾20亿美元。

The FBI has seen a sharp increase in “business email crime,” a simple scam that is also known as “CEO fraud”, with more than 12,000 victims affected globally.

FBI发现，“商业电子邮件犯罪”急剧增加，全球受害者超过1.2万个。这是一种简单的骗局，又被称为“冒充CEO诈骗”。

In the scam, a criminal mimics a chief executive’s email account and directs an employee to wire money to an overseas bank account. By the time the company realises it has been duped, the money is gone.

在这种骗局中，犯罪分子用伪造的首席执行官电子邮箱账户发邮件指示员工将钱汇往境外银行户头。等到企业意识到其中有诈，资金已不翼而飞。

The average loss is $120,000 but some companies have been tricked into sending as much as $90m to offshore accounts, US authorities say.

美国当局表示，受害企业平均每家损失12万美元，但有的企业曾被骗向境外汇了9000万美元。

Reports of CEO fraud are accelerating. Between October 2013 and August 2015, about $1.2bn globally was lost to the scheme, the FBI said, but that loss increased by another $800m in the past six months. US authorities have traced the money involved to 108 countries.

报告遭遇此类诈骗的案件越来越多。FBI表示，2013年10月到2015年8月，全球因这种骗术蒙受的损失约为12亿美元，而过去6个月里又增加了8亿美元。美国当局已对涉案资金追踪至108个国家。

“Criminals don’t have borders and this is a global problem,” said James Barnacle, chief of the FBI’s money laundering unit. “We’re working with our criminal investigation resources, our cyber resources, our international operations divisions — which is all our legal attachés overseas — and we’re working with foreign partners around the world to try to tackle this crime problem.”

FBI反洗钱部门主管詹姆斯•巴纳克尔(James Barnacle)表示：“犯罪分子没有国界，这是个全球问题。我们正在动用我们的刑事调查资源、我们的网络资源、我们的国际事务部门——也就是我们所有在海外的法律专员——而且，我们还在和世界各地的外国合作伙伴合作，努力应对这个犯罪问题。”

The rise in reported CEO frauds can be partly attributed to companies detecting the crime, but it also reflects the simple nature of the scheme that can be run from anywhere around the globe.

冒充CEO诈骗案数量增加，部分可能要归因于企业发觉了这种犯罪行为，但它也反映出这种骗术十分简单，可以从全球任何地方发起。

“It’s easy. All you need is a computer,” Mr Barnacle said.

巴纳克尔表示：“这太容易了，你所需要的只是一台电脑。”

Most of the offshore bank accounts in which the money ends up are located in Asia or Africa, where it can be harder for the US to gain the assistance of local authorities.

这些资金最终流向的境外银行户头大多数位于亚洲或非洲，在这些地方美国可能更难得到当地政府部门的援手。

The FBI has seen similarities between different CEO fraud schemes but it is not clear if there is one dominant global ring.

FBI从不同的冒充CEO诈骗案中发现了一些相似之处，不过目前仍不清楚是否存在一个领头的全球诈骗集团。

“We’re putting more resource to it. We’re trying to find those patterns,” Mr Barnacle said.

巴纳克尔表示：“我们正向这类案件投入更多资源，试图找出犯罪手法。”