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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 that were quickly sent overseas.  (See Operation WireWire: The South Florida Cases -- Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3 .) Some of the earlier cases included US v. Eliot Pereira et al; US v. Gustavo Gomez et al; and US v. Cynthia Rodriguez et al.  So far, at least 250 shell corporations in South Florida have been identified that can all be linked back to the Roda Taher Money Laundering Network.  Those recruited communicated with Roda Taher, who was known as Rezi or Ressi, via WhatsApp and Email, including the gmail account "rezimarket@gmail.com."  On April 30, 2019, DOJ announced another related guilty plea.  This time three more related cases are lin

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 shocking trends when looked at on a state-by-state breakdown. https://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreports.aspx While the IC3 has been collecting Internet Crime complaints since 2000, starting in 2016, the IC3 provided a more detailed state-by-state breakdown than  ever before, allowing us to see how many victims experienced how much loss by crime type reported.  What is abundantly clear in the 2018 numbers is that the greatest dollar losses among the reports are coming from Business Email Compromise. Previous reporting from IC3.gov called Business Email Compromise The $12 Billion Scam  (July 12, 2018), although quite a bit of that fi

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: @Juliettemasker Juliette only has one tweet and it says "Just setting up my Twitter.  #myfirstTweet" Gosh, the pretty blonde whose random mashup of bio statement says "Author, Musician, Harry Potter Lover, Idea Agent, Troll King, You're beautiful" must be a cyber security fan who has read some of my tweets and was inspired to follow me, right? More likely, she is part of the botnet that has been assigned to search for the three character string "GAR" and follow people who come up in the search results.  Like these folks: This has been going on for some time . . . in fact, the shortcut for me is to look at the followers of "@gar" (the "communist socialist libertarian anarchist who likes tacos") on that last row.  Al

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 based on the volume of dollars stolen.  A single BEC scam can often lead to six-figure and even seven-figure losses!  According to a June 2018 BEC report from the Internet Crimes Complaint Center, so far the FBI has documented $12,536,948,299 in losses stolen from 78,617 businesses. Dissect Cyber decided that the best way to attack these scams and help protect those at-risk companies was to create an early warning system called Cyber Notify , based on their analysis of the vulnerable (and detectable) points of a BEC scam that is ABOUT TO HAPPEN!  To understand why their solution is so powerful, let's look at how a BEC fraud group is structured. BEC Org Charts Some of the leading expe

The Federal Trade Commission announced settlements this week that could result in many fewer of those annoying Robocalls we've all been receiving.  Who did they sanction and what were those companies doing? NetDotSolutions (James Christiano) James Christiano ran a company that provided and operated softwarea called "TelWeb," a call spamming platform.  His software violated several laws, including places marketing calls to people on the "Do Not Call" list, and using a spoofed caller id, intending to deceive call recipients. Of 883 Million robocalls per year, on the average, 157 million of the calls placed by TelWeb went to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry.  At least 54 Million calls, just in the first half of 2016, had spoofed caller ID numbers.  The FTC received almost 8,000 consumer complaints against this company, which contributed greatly to choosing to pursue this lawsuit! His companies, NetDotSolutions and TeraMESH Networks, were bot

Many cybercrime investigators seem narrowly focused on the bits and bytes of the crimes they investigate while not truly understanding or interacting with those who focus on where the money goes.  As we've been expanding our horizons, I've learned quite a bit and wanted to share some resources for others who may have been similarly limited in their focus. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)  was established in 1989. It built a list of Forty Recommendations for countries to address Money Laundering, which were first issued in 1990, and revised in 1996, 2001, 2003, and 2012.  Their latest FATF Annual Report (2017-2018) addresses Terrorist financing as well as new methods and trends and announces a research project on financing of recruitment for terrorism.  Many of these Recommendations meet our lives in the form of regulations on financial institutions and interactions between international law enforcement agencies. "Regardless of their size and complexity, the fina