Payment diversion
Payment diversion is the redirection of an intended payment to an unauthorized destination, often through fraudulent instructions that substitute an attacker's account for the legitimate recipient's.
A real payment sent to the wrong place
Payment diversion describes where the money goes. Vendor impersonation is one way to persuade someone to change that destination. Business email compromise is a broader fraud pattern involving an apparently trusted business email identity.
FinCEN describes schemes that replace supplier bank details or alter real-estate payment instructions. The purchase may be genuine even though the destination is fraudulent. A made-up invoice for something never ordered raises a different question: whether the payment is owed at all.
Find out whether funds moved
A fraudulent email, changed supplier record, approved transaction, and completed transfer are different stages. If the request was stopped, report an attempted diversion rather than money lost.
A changed supplier record can still affect a later payment. Finance and security need to compare the record changes with transaction history to see what happened.
The FBI recommends independently checking payment requests and changes to bank details or payment procedures. Use an established contact route, not one supplied only in the disputed request. If funds have already been sent in a suspected scam, contact the financial institution immediately and follow the incident-reporting process. Don’t wait for a routine internal review.