In Interpol’s Operation Haechi V, investigations across 70 countries uncovered coordinated business email compromise and fake vendor networks responsible for hundreds of millions in losses. Fraud is no longer a local or opportunistic event. It is organised, industrial and borderless.
For CFOs and senior finance leaders, this changes the equation. Traditional financial controls were built for single transactions, not for criminal networks that mirror global business supply chains.
From deception to infrastructure
Scams have evolved from isolated impersonation attempts into scalable ecosystems. A Europol study uncovered impersonation-as-a-service operations that sell verified bank accounts, forged supplier credentials and synthetic identities to fraud groups worldwide. These services even provide documentation templates and post-sale support, showing how professionalised the underground economy has become.
In FBI Operation Eagle Sweep, investigators disrupted schemes using lookalike vendor domains to intercept payments across multiple US states, exploiting shared enterprise systems to redirect legitimate transfers. Fraud now functions like infrastructure. It relies on the same principles as legitimate enterprise: efficiency, automation and connectivity.
Enterprise exposure is multiplying
For multinational organisations, one compromised vendor record can cascade across subsidiaries and markets. Manual call-backs, PDF invoices and periodic onboarding checks cannot keep pace with today’s real-time payment environment.
According to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, business email compromise schemes caused global losses exceeding US $3 billion in 2024. That scale highlights a consistent pattern: payment ecosystems are expanding faster than the controls that protect them.
Seeing relationships, not just transactions
Fraud moves through shared digital infrastructure such as messaging platforms, proxy servers and international payment rails. Protecting an organisation requires visibility into relationships, not only individual payments.
Finance leaders who can visualise vendor connections gain early-warning insight, allowing them to intervene before a transaction becomes a loss.
Building continuous verification
The next step for finance leaders is to turn visibility into continuity. Verification can no longer be a one-off control; it must evolve into a connected, always-on process that protects every transaction, no matter where it moves.
Eftsure supports that shift by maintaining a live network of verified vendor data across 39 countries and more than 7.5 million entities. This shared assurance layer helps organisations detect data changes and behavioural patterns that might signal fraud, long before payment approval.
These developments complement the progress made through Nacha’s account validation standards in the US and Confirmation of Payee in ANZ. Together they point to a future where domestic and international frameworks work in unison, creating true end-to-end protection.
The path forward
Global crackdowns such as Operation Haechi V prove that coordinated action can contain complex threats. The same principle applies to enterprise finance. By embedding verification across every vendor relationship and payment channel, CFOs can strengthen trust, resilience and the integrity of every transaction.
See how real-time, cross-border verification protects every payment.
