A coordinated policing campaign across multiple countries has dismantled a criminal network responsible for tens of millions of dollars in business email compromise (BEC) losses.
According to Europol, there will be five days of action in France and Israel between January 2022 and January 2023, involving eight raids and eight arrests, among them the involvement of Israeli gangs. It also included a person who was supposed to be the leader.
Police also seized €3 million ($3.4 million) from a Portuguese bank account, €1.1 million ($1.2 million) from a Hungarian bank account, €600,000 ($641,000) from a Croatian bank account, and €400,000 from a Spanish bank account. Seized electronic equipment and vehicles worth Euros ($427,000). , €350,000 ($374,000) in cryptocurrency.
The group is said to have targeted victims in France. In one case, he attempted to deceive an accountant by phone and wire transfer €500,000 ($535,000), which was later discovered and blocked.
In the second case, a property developer in Paris was targeted after the group impersonated a lawyer working for a well-known French accounting firm. According to Europol, the company was defrauded of his €38 million ($41 million) after the gang engineered the chief financial officer (CFO) into socializing him.
The funds were quickly laundered through European countries and China before making their way to Israel.
Investigations revealed money mules operating on behalf of gangs in Croatia, Portugal and Hungary.
BEC has been the most lucrative form of cybercrime in the last few years, generating billions of dollars in profits for fraudsters.
About $2.4 billion will be lost to this crime in 2021. This represents more than a third (35%) of the total FBI-recorded money he made that year.
Widespread operations to track down the Franco-Israeli gang include the Croatian National Police, the Croatian National Anti-Money Laundering Service, the French National Police, the French Gendarmerie, the Hungarian Budapest Metropolitan Police, the Israeli Police, the Portuguese Judicial Police, and the Spanish National Police.
