A group of online fraudsters behind thousands of online scams totaling more than $60 Million and involving hundreds of victims worldwide, have been arrested by the INTERPOL in cooperation with the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and Fortinet in June 2016.
The group runs 419 scam, dating scam, Alibaba scam, financial account hi-jacking and payment diversion fraud with worldwide targets. They also leveraged an extensive money laundering network in order to disburse funds.
The fraudsters deployed two types of social engineering scams targeting businesses through either payment diversion fraud or CEO fraud. This reinforces the prevelance of an advanced threat technique called “behavior blending.” Behavior blending is a technique used by criminals that allows them to blend in on a compromised network, which has a lot of potential for thwarting detection over sustained periods of time.
As a result of Fortinet’s actionable cyber threat intelligence, the head of the international criminal network was arrested in a joint operation by INTERPOL and the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) in June 2016.
“The public, and especially businesses, need to be alerted to this type of cyber-enabled fraud,” says Noboru Nakatani, Executive Director of the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation. “It is exactly through this type of public and private sector cooperation that INTERPOL will continue to help member countries in bringing cybercriminals to justice no matter where they are.”
“To help us all get ahead of threats instead of just chasing them, security vendors have a responsibility to share threat findings between public and private organizations,” says Derek Manky, Global Security Strategist, Fortinet.
“The best way to combat the negative impact of cybercriminals is partnership based on actionable intelligence from wide and diverse sources. Cybercrime has no borders, and this is an excellent example of a global collaborative effort to solve what is indeed a complex problem. We need to set examples and go after the Achilles heel - the malicious actors and their assets.”