Somewhere today, a finance team is wiring money to an account that looks exactly right. It won't be. This is the story that keeps repeating, and it's why we built the layer that stops it from happening at your company.
This isn't about careless companies. It's about good people, at good companies, doing exactly what they were trained to do.
BEC losses rose from $2.77B to $3.046B in the most recent IC3 report. Generative AI is projected to accelerate fraud losses roughly 32% a year through 2030.
14 pieces in the archive
That is the uncomfortable part. Coffr is an independent research effort focused on one narrow question: how do two companies prove they know who they are paying, before the money leaves the account? Every piece we publish sits under one of these three threads.
The vector
Thread hijacking, lookalike domains, forged remittance PDFs, and AI-assisted impersonation. We track how the initial contact actually happens, case by case.
From this threadAI agent payment controls should require a close file that proves the named customer authorized the specific invoice before release6 min read · August 11, 2026The process
Vendor onboarding, change-of-bank-detail requests, and approval chains. Most losses trace to a routine step that was never designed to be adversarial.
From this threadPayment vendor acquisition controls still trust outdated tools.5 min read · August 11, 2026The record
FBI IC3, FinCEN advisories, AFP surveys, Nacha rule changes, and court filings. We read the primary record and summarize what changed.
From this threadYou approved the PDF. Nobody verified the bank account7 min read · June 14, 2026You get the email Thursday afternoon. New account, usual vendor, same tone as always. Nothing about it looks wrong, because nothing about it was built to look wrong.
You send it.
Monday, the real vendor calls asking where their money is.
This is the actual shape of almost every case we've studied. Not a hack. Not a typo. A document that had no business being trusted, and was.
The exchange layer looks the same across industries. The stakes don't. These are the sectors our research covers most closely.
08 sectors under watch
Wire desks, treasury ops
Wire desks, treasury ops
Onboarding, money movement
Onboarding, money movement
Vendor setup, client trust
Vendor setup, client trust
Trust accounts, client funds
Trust accounts, client funds
Closings, escrow, wire
Closings, escrow, wire
Subcontractor payouts
Subcontractor payouts
Provider disbursements
Provider disbursements
AP, vendor onboarding
AP, vendor onboarding
Every wire fraud case we've read reduces to the same sentence: someone trusted a document that arrived by email, and no system on either side was in a position to disagree.
This isn't about careless companies. It's about good people, at good companies, doing exactly what they were trained to do.
A curated feed of banking, fraud, and payments coverage from regulators and industry press, updated continuously.
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Practitioners on the research panel get short surveys about payment verification and fraud controls, plus the findings before they are published.
We publish what we learn: the vectors, the case patterns, the regulatory record, and the industry signals worth tracking. Get the weekly briefing, or join the research panel.
