Collaborate Disseminate
“Operation Eagle Sweep” is the latest crackdown on business email compromise (BEC) scams by international law enforcement.
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Business email compromise again proved costliest, at $2.4 billion, according to the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center
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Analysts have noticed various attempts in recent years by hackers trying to breach entities in the aviation and aerospace industries, as well as related transportation fields. The operators typically use of off-the-shelf malware and deploy digital lures that refer to industry-specific topics like airline cargo conferences or machine parts. It now appears that most of those incidents were by the same group, according to cybersecurity firm Proofpoint. Dubbing the group “TA2541,” Proofpoint says the trail of evidence goes back to at least 2017, and the hackers remain a “consistent, active cybercrime threat.” Hundreds of different organizations have been targeted globally, with an emphasis on North America, Europe and the Middle East, the researchers say. Crime seems to be the main goal, says Sherrod DeGrippo, vice president of threat research and detection at Proofpoint, given TA2541’s targeting, its victims, its use of commodity malware and its high message volume. Campaigns ranging […]
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International law enforcement authorities say they’ve arrested nearly a dozen members of a notorious Nigerian cybercrime gang potentially responsible for targeting as many as 50,000 victims in various scams in recent years. Some of the 11 suspects are thought to be associated with “SilverTerrier,” a syndicate accused of employing a range of malware variants in tens of thousands of financial scams dating back to at least 2014, Interpol said Wednesday. The announcement comes two months after three members of the same group were arrested after a year-long Interpol-led investigation called Operation Falcon into the prolific business email compromise (BEC) scams the group’s members are alleged to have pulled off over the years. Authorities called this latest roundup Operation Falcon II. The arrests occurred between Dec. 13 and 22, but it’s not clear exactly where. A statement from a senior Nigerian law enforcement official and included in the Interpol release referenced […]
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Hundreds of advertisers are collecting valuable student data from a service that allows schools to add sports data to their informational app for students, researchers at the Me2Be Alliance found. The new findings build on previous research from the nonprofit that found the majority of sampled school apps were sharing data with advertising software kits. This time researchers examined web traffic originating from links embedded directly into the customized school apps using a utility called WebView. “These are taxpayer-funded school utility apps that have integrated some of the most aggressive advertising chains you can think of,” said Zach Edwards, one of the report’s researchers. The WebView software gives developers a way to allow users to open links within an app, instead of a separate web browser. The process makes it easier for developers to include content in their apps but harder for users to control privacy settings. WebView itself doesn’t expose […]
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U.S. law enforcement recovered nearly $3.7 million in fraud proceeds and charged more than 30 individuals for their alleged involvement in receiving or transferring illicit proceeds over the past 10 weeks. The arrests, announced Friday, were part of the Justice Department’s “Money Mule Initiative,” which is aimed at cracking down on Americans who assist international fraudsters in moving funds from victims of a wide variety of fraud efforts, including romance scams and business email compromise schemes. The initiative in total targeted 4,757 individuals involved in “money mule” activity, more than twice the number of individuals reached by last year’s initiative. Actions were taken in all 50 states. Twenty-five members of Europol also cooperated in the action. “Every time an individual who has previously been operating as a money mule stops doing so, foreign fraudsters are forced to expend time and effort rebuilding that infrastructure differently,” said a Justice Department official […]
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An Interpol operation to combat online fraud concluded with the arrests of 1,003 people and the interception of $27 million in illicit funds, according to the international police organization, which conducted the crackdown alongside 20 countries. Waged from June to September of this year, “Operation HAECHI-II” targeted online crime like romance scams, investment fraud and money laundering associated with illegal online gambling. But it also turned up a business email compromise scheme in Colombia and led to alerts about malware tied to the popular Netflix show “Squid Game.” Interpol said the crackdown demonstrated how cybercrime has risen to new levels since the outbreak of the coronavirus. It’s the latest international warning about how the pandemic has fueled a crime wave, even setting aside attacks targeting the health care sector or exploiting COVID-19 that have flourished over the past two years. “The results of Operation HAECHI-II show that the surge in […]
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An accused money launderer allegedly used his position as an employee at Bank of America and TD Bank to aid an email fraud scheme that scammed five businesses out of more than $1 million. The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday that a grand jury had returned an indictment against three men — Onyewuchi Ibeh, Jason Joyner and Mouaaz Elkhebri — charging them with money laundering and aggravated identity theft. The defendants allegedly operated a business email compromise scheme, in which thieves pose as a business or associate in an email then ask a victim to wire up to hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. Elkhebri, a 30-year-old resident of Alexandria, Va., used inside access at Bank of America (where he worked as a personal banker and relationship manager from 2015 through 2017) and then TD Bank (where he worked from 2017 through 2018) to open multiple accounts […]
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Police in Europe have arrested more than 100 people who allegedly stole more than $11 million in a years-long fraud operation that law enforcement officials have linked to an Italian mafia group. Officials in Italy and Spain arrested 106 suspects who are accused of using phishing, credit card fraud and other cybercrime techniques in conjunction with drug trafficking and property crime, according to the European law enforcement agency Europol. Thieves used business email compromise schemes and SIM swapping — in which scammers take control of a victim’s phone number to steal sensitive information — before laundering the funds via a network of shell companies and money mules, police said in a statement Monday. The bust is the latest evidence hinting at the extent to which established organized crime groups are adopting the methods typically used by hackers. While scammers are known to operate in loose crime rings in Russia, Nigeria […]
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An international police sting netted 23 arrests in three countries of suspects behind a business email compromise scheme that last year turned to capitalizing on COVID-19 fears, Europol announced on Wednesday. Together, the fraudsters are believed to have stolen at least $1.2 million from companies in 20 countries, mainly European and Asian nations, the European Union police agency said. The scheme relied on use of compromised email accounts for advance-payment fraud, Europol said. The suspects created fake emails and websites that resembled those of legitimate companies to trick victims into placing orders with them. They then laundered financial data through Romanian bank accounts to ultimately withdraw money from ATMs. “The fraud was run by an organised crime group which prior to the COVID-19 pandemic already illegally offered other fictitious products for sale online, such as wooden pellets,” Europol’s announcement said. “Last year the criminals changed their modus operandi and started […]
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