FBI Recovers $14M From Bogus Business Account Wire Transfers

Federal authorities announced Monday that they had "disrupted" what they call "Business Email Compromise" schemes, which involve a malicious actor sending a phishing email and somehow convincing employees with access to a company's financial credentials to transfer money fraudulently. From a report: The FBI added that $2.4 million dollars was seized, while $14 million in "fraudulent wire transfers" was recovered. Seventy-four people were arrested worldwide, including 42 in the United States, 29 in Nigeria, and three others in Canada, Mauritius, and Poland. "Fraudsters can rob people of their life's savings in a matter of minutes," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. "These are malicious and morally repugnant crimes. The Department of Justice has taken aggressive action against fraudsters in recent months, conducting the largest sweep of fraud against American seniors in history back in February." The Department of Justice did not immediately provide a full list of those arrested, or the criminal complaints, but it said that, "since the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) began formally keeping track of BEC and its variant, email account compromise (EAC), there has been a loss of over $3.7 billion reported to the IC3."

Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised they didn't say that unbreakable encryption somehow enables these thieves to proliferate. Oh and throw something in about protecting the children for good measure.

Could be improved

[manu0601]

While $12 million USD were recovered, we are told:

since the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) began formally keeping track of BEC and its variant, email account compromise (EAC), there has been a loss of over $3.7 billion reported to the IC3

$12 million over $3.7 billion, that is a 0.3% recovery. I am not sure it will frighten fraudsters.

Let me guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI has the money now and those businesses will never see it again.

I bet I know how they did it

[slashmydots]

This has the hallmarks of tech support scammers which means 100% of the geniuses who call the number that pops up on their screen at least partially deserve it. If you're that stupid, you will find a way to lose your money. This is just how it happened in this case.

Nigerian spammers

[Antique Geekmeister]

These were apparently Nigerian spammers. The spammers and scammers are left alone to bring _any_ outside currency into a desperate local economy. A reasonable survey of bribery, reported at https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com], shows bribery as nearly 40% of the national and state budgets, and the police as being the most often bribed. I'm afraid to say that the people prosecuted most likely failed to pay the needed bribes, perhaps due to bankruptcy, and thus were some of the very few scammers ever prosecuted