This week, the FBI warned that between May 2018 and July 2019, losses from such BEC schemes around the world doubled year-on-year to more than $26 billion. This was quickly followed by a Department of Justice announcement that 281 people had been arrested in the U.S. and overseas for perpetrating BEC schemes designed “to intercept and hijack wire transfers from businesses and individuals.”
In announcing the 281 arrests from Operation reWired—a coordinated law enforcement effort by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury, and State, as well as the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the authorities claim to have disrupted “a sophisticated scam often targeting employees with access to company finances and businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments.”
As part of the operation, arrests were made in Nigeria, Turkey, Ghana, France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, and the U.K., highlighting just how international such schemes has become. The operation also seized more than $3.5 million—an admittedly modest sum given the scale of such attacks. Full story at Forbes: