Greg's Corner

Close to 300 email scammers arrested in global operation

Recently, the Justice Department announced the arrests of 281 scammers that were allegedly involved in email and wire fraud. The scams that were involved ran the gamut including business email compromise schemes, phony employment scams, lottery scams, phony car sales, and, of course, romance scams. These particualr scammers are said to have scammed their victims in the US out of $3.7 million. Those arrested are from all over the globe including Nigeria, the United States, Turkey, Ghana, France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom.

The business email compromise scheme is probably the costliest scam to hit the United States in recent times. In this scam, phony emails that look legitimate are sent to the financial departments of corporations trying to get money wired to overseas accounts. Often the emails will appear like they’ve been sent by the corporation’s CEO or some other high ranking official. According to the FBI, this scam has cost various companies tens of billions of dollars.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnK8JGeAfI%5D

While this sweep, dubbed Operation reWired, was a major success for the DOJ, in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a drop in the bucket. As technology advances, so do the scammers. They’re constantly refining their techniques to outsmart their victims while the rest of us are trying to play catch up. The best any of us can do is to continue educating ourselves on what scams to currently look out for as they continue to emerge.