Protect yourself from CEO fraud

Imagine working in the finance department of a Japanese corporation in Germany that is about to be taken over. The atmosphere is tense, as you and your colleagues are working overtime every day. One day, you suddenly receive an e-mail from the Japanese top CEO, urging you to transfer a large sum of money to a company unknown to you. It's about an urgent licence payment that has to be transferred today, lest the deal threatens to fall through. 

Further down the e-mail you find the communication between high-ranking employees of your head office in Tokyo and investors and representatives of this unknown company. Apparently the negotiations went on for several weeks, but strangely you did not hear anything about this matter.

Due to a public holiday, the money transfer cannot be issued from Japan because the banks are closed. The CEO missed the deadline and is now asking you for this unusual favour in strict confidence, since the banks in Europe are open and a timely transfer is still possible.
Everything depends on you now! How would you act? Do you want to bear the responsibility of the transfer not being executed in time? Or will you do the CEO this favor, who will surely grant you his gratitude and goodwill?

This scam is known as CEO fraud. In order to make the e-mails look as realistic as possible, the scammers collect information such as names, e-mail addresses and organigrams of your company. They use social networks, media reports, or even internal e-mails from previous data leaks to construct a plausible storyline.

Since many companies unfortunately do not digitally sign and encrypt all their e-mails, it is very easy to forge such fraudulent messages, including the sender addresses. In addition to e-mails, fake text messages that appear to come from the CEO's mobile phone are often sent as well.

Please always be suspicious if you receive such unusual and hasty instructions (usually with an urgent request for confidentiality)! 
Consult with other colleagues and ask for confirmation from the CEO through other communication channels before jumping to rash actions.