FINRA has recently warned Broker Dealers to be on alert for an email targeting their compliance personnel.

The email appears to be coming from a credit union notifying the firm about potential money laundering involving one of their clients.  There is an attachment to the email.  There is a malicious virus in the email that if opened, will allow unauthorized access to the recipient’s computer network.

Broker Dealers who have received the suspicious email report that it appears to be coming from a BSA-AML compliance officer working at an Indiana based credit union.

In order to appear legitimate, the sender refers to the USA Patriot Act relating to the ability of financial institutions to share information with each other.

Do not open any attachments from unknown sources as well as:

• emails that appear to be from Europe rather than US based credit unions
• any emails with poor grammar and sentence structure
• any request to open the email attachment for more details

For FINRAs full information notice, click here.