---
title: "What is CEO fraud? Definition"
description: "CEO fraud is a scam in which a criminal impersonates a CEO, CFO or other executive to pressure an employee into making an urgent, confidential payment...."
url: https://realpayee.com/glossary/ceo-fraud
canonical: https://realpayee.com/glossary/ceo-fraud
date_published: 2026-10-05
date_modified: 2026-10-05
author: RealPayee
---

# CEO fraud

> CEO fraud is a scam in which a criminal impersonates a CEO, CFO or other executive to pressure an employee into making an urgent, confidential payment. It is a type of business email compromise, also called executive impersonation or whaling, and increasingly uses cloned voices or deepfake video.

_Published 2026-10-05 · Updated 2026-10-05 · By RealPayee_

## Related terms

- [Business email compromise (BEC)](https://realpayee.com/glossary/business-email-compromise): Business email compromise is fraud in which criminals use spoofed, lookalike or hijacked business email to trick employees into sending money or sensitive data.
- [Deepfake](https://realpayee.com/glossary/deepfake): A deepfake is AI-generated or AI-altered audio, video or imagery that convincingly imitates a real person.
- [Voice cloning](https://realpayee.com/glossary/voice-cloning): Voice cloning uses AI to synthesize speech in a specific person's voice from samples of their recordings.
- [Social engineering](https://realpayee.com/glossary/social-engineering): Social engineering is manipulating people - rather than hacking systems - into breaking normal procedures, typically through authority, urgency, secrecy or familiarity.

## Why it matters for finance teams

Most payment fraud reaches AP as a request that looks legitimate. Understanding ceo fraud helps your team spot it and apply the right control: verify bank-detail changes and large payment requests with the real person, out-of-band, before money moves. Our free [bank-change policy template](https://realpayee.com/templates/vendor-bank-change-policy) puts that into a written rule.

Full glossary: https://realpayee.com/glossary · All terms as JSON Lines: https://realpayee.com/feeds/glossary.jsonl

## Related

- [CEO fraud and deepfake executive calls: how finance teams stop them](https://realpayee.com/ceo-fraud) - How CEO fraud works - from spoofed emails to deepfake video calls - and the verification steps that stop fake payment requests. (markdown: https://realpayee.com/ceo-fraud.md)
- [How do deepfake CFO scams work?](https://realpayee.com/answers/how-do-deepfake-cfo-scams-work) - How deepfake CFO and CEO scams work, from cloned voice messages to fake video calls, and the verification steps that stop them. (markdown: https://realpayee.com/answers/how-do-deepfake-cfo-scams-work.md)

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