“The scammers are extremely well organized and law enforcement is not,” said Sherry Williams, a director of a San Francisco nonprofit recently hit by a BEC scam.
In the nail salon case involving Grand Rapids, police say $2.8 million was stolen. Banks were able to recall about half that amount once the scam was discovered, court records show. The Secret Service agent said Abourched’s claims were false and he’d used a similar ruse with police after he received money from a BEC scam targeting a Florida storage company.
Crane Hassold, an expert on BEC scams and former cyber analyst with the FBI, has heard of federal prosecutors declining to take BEC cases unless several million dollars were stolen, a minimum threshold that speaks to how out of control the problem is. “Our message to criminals involved in these types of BEC schemes will remain clear: The FBI’s memory and reach is long and wide-ranging, we will relentlessly pursue you no matter where you may be located,” said Brian Turner, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch.
For years both BEC scams and ransomware attacks were treated largely as a law enforcement problem. That’s still true for BEC attacks, but ransomware is now a key national security concern after a series of disruptive attacks on critical infrastructure like the one last year against the biggest fuels pipeline in the U.S. that led to gas shortages along the East Coast.
If the U.S. were to launch a whole-of-government response to BEC fraud, it almost certainly would focus heavily on Nigeria. “I hope someday I will be inspiring more young people to join me on this path,” read one Instagram post by Abbas, who pleaded guilty in the U.S. to international money laundering related to BEC and other cybercrimes last year. His sentencing is currently set for July.
“If it’s not born in you to take up challenges, you cannot do it,” Okeke said at the 2018 event when discussing his entrepreneurial drive.
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