FTC flags fake Evite and Paperless Post phishing targeting wealthy clients' email

Scammers are using fake invitations styled after Evite and Paperless Post to reach wealthy clients' personal email accounts, the Federal Trade Commission warned in a May 2026 consumer alert cited by InvestmentNews. The messages ask recipients to enter an email username and password to view event details; scammers then take over the account and send the same bogus invitation to the victim's contacts.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 191,561 phishing and spoofing complaints in 2025, the most of any crime type, according to its 2025 Internet Crime Report released in April 2026. Reported phishing losses roughly tripled to $215.8 million from $70 million in 2024, and total reported cybercrime losses hit a record $20.877 billion.

Email is usually how passwords to financial accounts get reset, so one compromised inbox can hand an attacker a route to significant assets. That is the exposure Steve Czocher, a partner and director of family office services at Chicago-based Gresham Partners, describes for wealthy households, which he says are most exposed through personal email. The risk climbs, he says, when clients still use older services such as Yahoo and AOL, or have not turned on two-factor authentication.

"Accessing sensitive accounts on public Wi-Fi adds further risk. A VPN can help protect the connection, but it cannot prevent phishing or account takeover on its own," Czocher said.

The circle of professionals around a wealthy family widens the target, according to Brian Francetich, director of Golsan Scruggs RIA, which provides insurance and risk management to investment advisory firms. Advisors, attorneys, accountants, private bankers and family office staff each give an attacker another identity to impersonate.

"In many cases, the underlying technology isn't the primary issue. The challenge is that the communication appears legitimate enough for a reasonable person to trust it, and the bad actors continue to get better at this," Francetich said.

Heather Sweeney, strategic partner manager at BlackCloak, a digital executive protection firm based in Lake Mary, Florida, says many affluent families lack at home the safeguards they rely on at work. Artificial intelligence is widening that gap, she says.

The FBI report counted 22,364 complaints referencing AI in 2025, with about $893 million in associated losses, according to InvestmentNews.