Kim Le of A2Q2 will present to the ProVisors Silicon Valley M&A group on August 24 on a threat the firm sees underestimated in nearly every private company it works with. Vendor payment wire fraud has become materially harder to detect as the tooling available to bad actors has improved, and the consequences reach well past the money itself when a transaction is pending.
The session is built around a client engagement A2Q2 describes as the starkest it has worked. A company lost roughly $36 million through a sophisticated fraudulent vendor scheme. The matter drew an FBI investigation, a pending deal did not survive it, and management froze transactions until it was satisfied the payment environment was sound again.
Why this lands differently in a deal Fraud discovered during diligence is not only a loss. It is a question about the control environment, raised at the moment a buyer is deciding what the business is worth and how much of the management team it wants to keep. A2Q2's position is that the distraction, the reputational damage and the collapsed transaction routinely cost more than the stolen funds.
That framing is the reason the firm is taking the topic to an M&A audience rather than a purely technical one.
What has changed The controls most companies rely on were designed against a slower, sloppier criminal adversary. Fraudulent vendor correspondence used to give itself away through awkward phrasing, obvious address mismatches and requests that did not fit the relationship. Much of that friction is gone thanks to AI tools. Requests now arrive fluent, contextually accurate and patient, and they arrive against payment and banking processes that in many companies have gone unreviewed for years.
A2Q2's view is not that companies lack controls. It is that the controls were built for a different threat and have not been revisited since.
Why private companies absorb most of it Private companies tend to carry fewer independent reviews of the payment cycle, longer tenure in the roles that touch it, and less separation between the person who sets up a vendor and the person who pays one. The firm reports client losses across a wide range, including a former client that lost $1.2 million and others in the tens of thousands, which suggests exposure is not limited to companies of a particular size.
What the session covers The presentation runs about ten minutes and is structured around the case rather than a control framework. It closes on practical steps a finance function can take without a large program, starting with reviewing how vendor banking details are changed and who is able to change them.
About A2Q2
A2Q2 works with accounting and finance departments at growth stage and newly public technology companies, describing itself as the Special Ops team for those functions. Its work spans accounting operations, SOX readiness and testing, internal controls design, and the control environment questions that surface when a company is preparing for a transaction or for public company reporting.
Media Contact A2Q2 Kim Le a2q2.com
Media Contact
Company Name: A2Q2
Contact Person: Kim Le
Email: Send Email
Phone: 408-420-9108
City: Redwood
Country: United States
Website: https://a2q2.com/
