The FBI on Monday announced the arrest of 74 people across three continents for hijacking bank transfers using email fraud. The “cyber-enabled financial fraud” allegedly carried out by those apprehended could involve social engineering and computer intrusions to dupe company executives into wiring money, the FBI said. A criminal could use an executive’s compromised email to facilitate a transfer or request W-2 information from within the organization, for example. The scam is essentially a more sophisticated version of the “Nigerian prince” emails that pester the average email user for money. Twenty-nine of the suspects were arrested in Nigeria, 42 in the United States, and the rest in Canada, Mauritius, and Poland. Several of the cases involved global criminal groups that defrauded companies big and small, according to the FBI. The departments of Homeland Security and Treasury, along with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, were also in on “Operation WireWire” to take down […]
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