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In January 2016, Austria-based aircraft component maker FACC AG reported that criminal activity involving its IT and communications systems had caused an outflow of about €50 million in liquid funds. SecurityWeek rendered that amount as $54 million in its headline. The accounting department was reportedly targeted, but the available account does not establish exactly how the money was taken.
What happened at FACC?
On January 22, 2016, SecurityWeek reported that FACC believed the attackers came from outside the company. Austrian criminal and forensic investigations had been launched. The report identified the accounting department as the reported target, but did not describe a confirmed attack sequence.
FACC’s management board said, as quoted in that report, that the loss was “an outflow of approx. EUR 50 mio of liquid funds.” The board also said it had taken immediate structural measures and was evaluating damages and insurance claims. The €50 million figure is FACC’s approximate reported amount; $54 million was the headline’s contemporary conversion.
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How did hackers steal the money?
The precise method is not established in the accessible account. It does not confirm how the criminals first gained access, whether they compromised email accounts, or whether they used business email compromise (BEC). Calling the FACC incident a confirmed BEC attack would go beyond what the reporting says.
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Why BEC is relevant—but unconfirmed
The FBI describes BEC as fraud targeting organizations that regularly make wire transfers. Criminals may use social engineering or computer intrusion to compromise email accounts and fraudulently direct electronic transfers. They may research employees who handle money and learn internal transfer procedures. Those general patterns help explain why a finance department can be a target; they do not prove that this was FACC’s attack method.
In a February 27, 2017 BEC explainer, the FBI quoted Special Agent Martin Licciardo, an organized-crime investigator at its Washington Field Office, calling BEC “a serious threat on a global scale.” The statement describes the broader threat, not a finding about FACC.
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Was FACC’s production disrupted?
No disruption was reported at the time. FACC said its production and engineering units were operating normally and that there was no economic threat to the company’s liquidity. SecurityWeek also reported the company’s position that its IT infrastructure and business operations had not been impacted.
The report said there was no evidence then that data or intellectual property had been stolen. These were contemporaneous statements and observations, not a later forensic conclusion about the completed investigation.
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Was the money recovered?
The accessible reporting does not establish how much, if any, FACC recovered, whether an insurer paid a claim, or what the completed investigations found. FACC said it was evaluating insurance claims and would decide on further actions after forensic investigations produced results; the report did not give their eventual outcome.
The FBI’s 2016 advisory warned generally that recovering funds sent overseas is often unsuccessful and emphasized prevention and education. That guidance is not evidence of what happened to FACC’s funds.
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How large was the wider BEC problem?
Two historical figures provide context, but neither measures FACC’s case:
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- The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported 298,728 total complaints and losses exceeding $1.3 billion across all reported internet-crime categories in 2016. This was not a BEC-only total.
These figures cover different scopes, and complaint reporting and aggregation affect what they include. They should not be treated as directly comparable or as an estimate of losses from the FACC incident.
What finance teams can take from the incident
The reporting does not establish that any particular safeguard would have prevented the FACC loss. The FBI’s description of BEC nevertheless points to practical areas for organizations to examine when they handle electronic transfers:
- Verify changes to payment instructions with the recipient through a separately obtained contact channel, rather than relying only on the message requesting the change.
- Require a second, independent approval for unusual or high-value transfers.
- Separate payment approval from payment execution where practical.
- Train finance staff to recognize urgent or unexpected payment requests and to check them against established procedures.
- If a transfer appears fraudulent, contact the financial institution and law enforcement promptly; the FBI stresses prevention and rapid reporting in its general guidance.
These are general controls for transfer-fraud risk, not claims about the controls FACC had in place or the method used against it.
Quick Recap
Sources
- SecurityWeek: FACC’s January 2016 report and contemporaneous company statements
- FBI Cleveland Field Office: BEC victims and losses through February 2016
- FBI: BEC methods and general response guidance
- IC3: 2016 Internet Crime Report
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