WSMV Channel 4 Scam preys on Middle Tennessee businesses

Scam preys on Middle Tennessee businesses

It started with an email to Ashley's Furniture.

"It looked very much like a Better Business Bureau email alerting us to a consumer issue," said the regional manager. 

Attached was a major headache.

"When you open the email it looked like it was trying to load but it went to a blank page and wouldn't load in the email," he said. 

Turns out, the email that looked like it was from Middle Tennessee's Better Business Bureau, an organization designed to protect businesses and consumers, was actually attacking them.

"You know if you ever want to cause a problem for the Better Business Bureau this con artist has certainly done it," said the BBB's CEO Kathleen Calligan. 

Here's how it works: You open the email, it asks you to respond, but when you do the email releases a virus, and it only gets worse from there.

"This can also release a bot into your email system. If you do online banking it can lay dormant until you begin an online transaction. It can attach and then later transfer money out of your account. This is very, very serious," said Calligan. 

Serious enough to contact the FBI.  Calligan said this has been happening for two weeks, they're getting hundreds of calls a day and, even though Nashville's bureau was the first to bring it to officers' attention, it's happening all over the country.

Ashley's Furniture was lucky.  So far their system seems to be fine, but they're still issuing a warning, because this viral imposter is showing no signs of stopping.

"As soon as we get one shut down it will re-invent itself. This could cause our business community a tremendous amount of problems," said Calligan. 

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