"European Police Arrest 100 Suspects in BEC Crackdown"

European police have recently released details of two major operations against business email compromise (BEC) fraudsters, which resulted in the arrest of close to 100 suspects.  Europol stated that Operation Wine Cellar and Operation Theatre were carried out in November 2021 but are only now being made public due to operational reasons.  The operations were carried out by the Anti-Economic Crime Department of the Budapest Metropolitan Police with the support of Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre.  The Budapest Metropolitan Police made the arrests after working through two complex fraud cases.  The cases involved an organized crime group in the region that targeted state-owned companies with fake invoices.  Europol stated that the criminals would impersonate a service company to inform their victims that the service company now had a new bank account to which the payments for the provided services should be sent.  Once the payments were made to the bank accounts controlled by the criminals, the funds would be moved around to conceal their illegal origin.  The scheme defrauded 94 organizations in this way, racking up profits of €2.8m for the scammers.  BEC has for several years been the highest-earning cybercrime type for threat actors.  In 2021, it resulted in losses of $2.4bn for victims, over a third of the total reported to the FBI that year.  About a year ago, police in Europe arrested nearly two dozen suspects in a €1m BEC bust.

Infosecurity reports: "European Police Arrest 100 Suspects in BEC Crackdown"