Security News > 2021 > September > Mafia works remotely, too, it seems: 100+ people suspected of phishing, SIM swapping, email fraud cuffed

Police arrested 106 people suspected of carrying out online fraud for an organized crime gang linked to the Italian Mafia, Europol said on Monday.

It's claimed the suspects scammed hundreds of victims using phishing; SIM swapping attacks, in which crooks typically take control of people's cellphone numbers to get account login tokens texted to them; and so-called business email compromise, in which fraudsters typically use bogus invoices and the like to trick company staff into transferring money to the thieves.

The cops said some of those cuffed have "Links to mafia organisations." We wouldn't be surprised at all if the mob has or had ties to other phishing and cyber-fraud rings.

In the past, the law enforcement agency busted an operation that involved fraudsters hijacking companies' email systems to send messages that convinced those businesses' customers to wire payments to the crooks' bank accounts.

You have to hand it to the Mafia for keeping up with the times and trends as phishing, business email compromise, and SIM swapping are truly crimes of the era.

Google claims it stops more than 100 million harmful emails from going into Gmail accounts per day, and during the peak of the pandemic last year, there were 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID alone.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/europol_arrests/