Security News > 2022 > October > BEC fraudster and romance scammer sent to prison for 25 years
In this case, we're referring to Elvis Eghosa Ogiekpolor, jailed for 25 years in Atlanta, Georgia for running a cybercrime group that scammed close to $10,000,000 in uunder two years from individuals and business caught up in so-called romance and BEC scams.
BEC is short for business email compromise, an umbrella term for a form of online scam in which the attackers acquire login access to email accounts inside a company, so that the fraudulent emails they send don't just seem to come from the company they're attacking, but actually do come from there.
Deleting fake emails from the Sent folder so the genuine user never sees them.
Even if an unusual email comes from the internal account of a colleague, not from an outsider, replying to the sender to ask if it's genuine or not will give you a false sense of security.
As explained above, BEC scammers typically trim both the Inbox and the Sent folders of victim's accounts so that even if they review their recent email correspondence carefully, fake messages sent in their name will not show up.
TO PROTECT YOURSELF, FRIENDS AND FAMILY FROM ROMANCE SCAMS. Slow down when dating talk turns from friendship, love or romance to money.