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DOJ disrupts massive business email scam operation
The FBI and federal partners today announced scores of arrests in the United States and overseas in a coordinated law enforcement sweep targeting perpetrators of an insidious scam that tricks businesses and individuals into wiring money to criminals.
Operation reWired, a monthslong, multi-agency effort to disrupt and dismantle international business email compromise (BEC) schemes, resulted in 281 arrests, including 74 in the United States, officials announced. Arrests were also made in Nigeria, Turkey, Ghana, France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. The sweep resulted in the seizure of nearly $3.7 million and the disruption and recovery of approximately $118 million in fraudulent wire transfers.
Victims of business email compromise schemes are encouraged to contact law enforcement immediately and file a complaint online with the IC3 at bec.ic3.gov. The IC3 reviews complaints, looks for patterns or other indicators of significant criminal activity, and refers investigative packages of complaints to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.
A number of cases charged in this operation involved international criminal organizations that defrauded small- to large-sized businesses, while others involved individual victims who transferred high-dollar amounts or sensitive records in the course of business. The devastating impacts these cases have on victims and victim companies affect not only the individual business but also the global economy. Since the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) began formally keeping track of BEC and its variant, e-mail account compromise (EAC), there has been a loss of over $3.7 billion reported to the IC3.
More information about the operation is available by clicking: Eurojust/Europol. In addition, the Dutch National Police have created the following website to check whether your email address has been compromised by the administrators of Emotet:
Federal authorities announced today a significant coordinated effort to disrupt Business Email Compromise (BEC) schemes that are designed to intercept and hijack wire transfers from businesses and individuals, including many senior citizens. Operation reWired, a coordinated law enforcement effort by the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the U.S. Department of State, was conducted over a four-month period, resulting in 281 arrests in the United States and overseas, including 167 in Nigeria, 18 in Turkey and 15 in Ghana. Arrests were also made in France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom (UK). The operation also resulted in the seizure of nearly $3.7 million.
A number of cases involved international criminal organizations that defrauded small to large sized businesses, while others involved individual victims who transferred high dollar funds or sensitive records in the course of business. The devastating effects these cases have on victims and victim companies affect not only the individual business but also the global economy. According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), nearly $1.3 billion in loss was reported in 2018 from BEC and its variant, Email Account Compromise (EAC), nearly twice as much as was reported the prior year. BEC and EAC are prevalent scams and the Justice Department along with our partners will continue to aggressively pursue and prosecute the perpetrators, including money mules, regardless of where they are located.
The indictment alleges that the Africa-based coconspirators committed, or caused to be committed, a series of intrusions into the servers and email systems of a Memphis-based real estate company in June and July 2016. Using sophisticated anonymization techniques, including the use of spoofed email addresses and Virtual Private Networks, the coconspirators identified large financial transactions, initiated fraudulent email correspondence with relevant business parties, and then redirected closing funds through a network of U.S.-based money mules to final destinations in Africa. Commonly referred to as business email compromise, or BEC, this aspect of the scheme caused hundreds of thousands in loss to companies and individuals in Memphis.
These business email scams rely partly on deception and in some cases hacking. Scammers send specially crafted spearphishing emails to their targets in order to trick them into turning over sensitive information about the company, such as sending employee W-2 tax documents so scammers can generate fraudulent refunds, or tricking an employee into making wire transfers to bank accounts controlled by the scammers. More often than not, the scammers use spoofing techniques to impersonate a senior executive over email to trick the unsuspecting victim, or hack into the email account of the person they are impersonating.
Law enforcement arrested 281 people, who allegedly facilitated business email scams, in a global operation known as Operation: reWired. See -rewired-bec-takedown-091019 and -arrested-worldwide-coordinated-international-enforcement-operation-targeting-hundreds for more information.
The U.S. government, in tandem with officials in nine other countries, have taken down yet another massive Business Email Compromise (BEC) scam, this one involving the theft of 250,000 identities and more than 10,000 phony tax returns.
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It is now possible to use such data to automatically generate phishing content that mirrors the writing style and syntax of a sender and tailors the content of each phishing email to topics they have already discussed with the target. Detecting phishing will no longer be a matter of looking for obvious indicators like bank scam subjects or awkward English usage.
The bureau posted a public service announcement Tuesday that showed business email compromise (BEC) attacks have cost organizations worldwide more than $26 billion between June 2016 and July of this year. The three-year total is based on actual victim complaints reported to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Earlier this year, the IC3's 2018 Internet Crime Report highlighted business email compromise as an evolving threat that accounted for a growing number of cybercrime-related losses for enterprises.
"The scam is frequently carried out when a subject compromises legitimate business or personal email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds," the FBI wrote in its alert.
The FBI also said it tracked a 100% increase in global losses from business email compromise attacks between May 2018 and July of this year. The bureau said the increase was partially due to a greater awareness of the threat, which the FBI said "encourages reporting to the IC3 and international and financial partners."
Losses from business email compromise attacks have alarmed some in the cyber insurance market. Jeffrey Smith, managing partner at Cyber Risk Underwriters, said during a Black Hat 2019 session that two most common cyber insurance claims his company saw were for ransomware and wire transfer fraud related to email attacks.
In July, insurance giant American International Group (AIG) Inc. reported that business email compromise attacks had become the leading cause of cyber insurance claims, surpassing ransomware. According to AIG's report, business email compromise accounted for nearly a quarter of all reported cyber incidents in 2018 for the EMEA region.
The FBI alert recommended that employees enable two-factor authentication to protect against threat actors looking to assume control of email accounts. The alert also recommended employees "ensure the URL in emails is associated with the business it claims to be from," though this step wouldn't necessarily prevent business email compromise attacks where attackers have gained control of legitimate email accounts within an organization.
Shortly after the FBI alert was issued, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that 281 individuals had been arrested in "Operation reWired," a global law enforcement effort to take down business email compromise campaigns.
Operation reWired was conducted over a fourth-month period and resulted in seizures of nearly $3.7 million in assets. Arrests were made in the U.S., Nigeria, France, Italy, Japan, Turkey, the U.K. and other countries, with 74 arrests made in the U.S. and 167 arrests in Nigeria; the Justice Department said foreign individuals who conduct business email compromise scams "are often members of transnational criminal organizations, which originated in Nigeria but have spread throughout the world." 2ff7e9595c
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