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FACC, an Austrian aircraft-parts maker, removed CEO Walter Stephan in May 2016 after an employee transferred a large sum in an email impersonation scam. The company’s supervisory board said it considered Stephan’s duties severely violated in relation to the incident. That was the board’s stated reason for the dismissal; the contemporaneous reports do not say Stephan took part in the fraud.
How the FACC email scam happened
In January 2016, a FACC employee reportedly received email instructions from someone impersonating company leadership and transferred a large sum. Softpedia described the message as spoofed and connected to an urgent business transaction. Reporting said the money was sent to overseas accounts.
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The accounts available in contemporaneous reports do not establish how the sender obtained or imitated leadership identities, whether any email account was compromised, what the original message said, or which payment checks were involved. They describe an email-based impersonation and payment fraud, not evidence of a malware infection or network intrusion.
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Why FACC dismissed CEO Walter Stephan
In May 2016, FACC’s supervisory board removed Stephan with immediate effect and appointed Robert Machtlinger interim CEO, according to Infosecurity Magazine’s report of the board’s announcement. The board said: “The supervisory board came to the conclusion, that Mr. Walter Stephan has severely violated his duties, in particular in relation to the ‘Fake President Incident’.”
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This is the board’s stated governance rationale, reproduced by a news outlet—not an independent legal finding. The cited reports do not allege that Stephan or another dismissed executive participated in the scam.
How much money was involved—and what the figures mean
Contemporaneous reports give different estimates of the amount transferred. The figures below are attributed to their respective reports because they are not reconciled in the available accounts.
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| Measure | Reported figure | Source and context |
|---|---|---|
| Amount reportedly stolen or transferred | Around €50 million ($55.7 million) | AFP, published by SecurityWeek, May 25, 2016. |
| Amount reportedly stolen or transferred | €52.8 million ($56.79 million) | Softpedia, May 26, 2016. |
| Amount reportedly recovered | €10.9 million | Softpedia, May 26, 2016. |
| Scam cost reported for FACC’s 2015/16 business year | €41.9 million | AFP, published by SecurityWeek, May 25, 2016; an incident-cost figure, not the amount initially transferred. |
| Pretax result reported for FACC’s 2015/16 business year | €23.4 million loss | AFP, published by SecurityWeek, May 25, 2016; the company’s annual pretax result, not another estimate of the stolen amount. |
These figures describe different things: a reported transfer, a reported recovery, an accounting cost attributed to the scam, and the company’s annual pretax result. They should not be added together or treated as interchangeable.
What the incident shows about payment-fraud risk
The “Fake President” label describes a fraud pattern in which an attacker impersonates an executive to prompt a payment. The practical safeguard is to verify a changed or urgent payment request through a trusted contact route that is independent of the message—not by replying to it or using contact details supplied in it. Organizations can also require a second person to approve payments and set clear procedures for confirming unusual instructions.
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Those are general controls for reducing impersonation risk; the contemporaneous reporting does not establish which controls FACC had, lacked, or bypassed. AFP’s account is available at SecurityWeek; Softpedia’s report is here; and Infosecurity Magazine’s account of the board statement is here.
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