Operation ReWired arrests 281 Business Email Compromise criminals
Operation: ReWired announced on September 10, 2019 On September 10, 2019, the Department of Justice announced that 281 arrests related to Business Email Compromise had been made, with 74 of those arrested being in the United States. It will take some time to track down the names of all of ... Read More
Los Angeles: Stories of the BEC Victims (part 2)
In my last blog post, Los Angeles Court charges 80 Nigerians with BEC and Romance Scam Crimes, we laid out the background of a major BEC investigation and telling the stories of six victims, but the court documents shared the details from thirty cases.Footage from CBS Los Angeles of the ... Read More
Los Angeles Court charges 80 Nigerians with BEC and Romance Scam Crimes
Bank of America, BBVA Compass, CalCom FCU, Capital One, Citibank, Citizens Bank, Comerica, Chase Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, SunTrust, TD Bank, US Bank, and Wells Fargo Bank were among the financial institutions who were scammed by the 80 Nigerian criminals named in a Los Angeles indictment unsealed this week ... Read More
Lauded Nigerian Entrepreneur may be a BEC Yahoo Boy
Obinwanne Okeke: The EntrepreneurObinwanne Okeke, 31 year old CEO and Founder of Invictus Group, is frequently lauded as a success story. At age 28, Forbes Africa featured him in their June 2016 issue under the title "Africa's Most Promising Entrepreneurs: Forbes Africa's 30 Under 30 for 2016".Although the 30 are ... Read More
FinCEN: BEC far worse than previously believed
Last week FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, put out a new advisory with information about Business Email Compromise and it is far worse than has been previously disclosed.FinCEN Advisory: FIN-2019-A005The FBI's Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3.gov) has previously called BEC a $12 Billion Scam. As we shared in April ... Read More
SMS Phish? Amazon Reward!
Are you getting text messages about winning prizes at Amazon?I got one today with the following text from a VOIP-to-SMS number: 1 (410) 200-910The text was: "FRM: You have a New Amazon Reward! MSG: http://dmkr3h.com/njngyw"I threw up a Virtual Machine to check the destination, and got a meaningless echo of ... Read More
The Next Miami Operation WireWire Case: Alfredo Veloso
In June of 2018, we blogged about a series of cases that the Department of Justice announced as "Operation: WireWire." In particular, we wrote three pieces about the "South Florida Cases" where a Lebanese recruiter convinced people to set up shell companies, open bank accounts, and receive large wire transfers ... Read More
IC3.gov: BEC Compromises and Romance Fraud 2018
The Internet Crime & Complaint Center, IC3.gov, publishes annual statistics about the crimes which have been reported to them during the previous calendar year. The full report offers insights and analysis into current trends in cybercrime. While it is widely acknowledged that cybercrime is dramatically under-reported, there are still some ... Read More
Twitter Mystery Followers: ? GarBot ?
I'm one of those people who tends to review the people who are following me on Twitter and to block a great number of them. Why? Because many of them aren't real people!Here are a few examples:@JuliettemaskerJuliette only has one tweet and it says "Just setting up my Twitter. #myfirstTweet"Gosh, ... Read More
Dissect Cyber wins major DHS S&T Award for their BEC Work
Congratulations to our great friends at Dissect Cyber for receiving the DHS S&T Global Award for their work on BEC scams!The FBI has been warning companies for several years now of the growing prominence of Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams as being one of the top forms of cyber crime ... Read More
