Europol Arrests 49 in Crackdown on Cybercriminals

Europol Headquarters, The Hague, Netherlands. Credit: europol.europa.eu

Europol has dismantled a group of cybercriminals active in Italy, Spain, Poland, the UK, Belgium and Georgia.

The members of the group are suspected of committing financial fraud involving email account intrusions, the European Union's law enforcement agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

A total of 49 suspects have been arrested in the joint international operation in which laptops, hard disks, telephones, tablets, credit cards and cash, SIM cards, memory sticks, forged documents and bank account documents were seized, Europol said.

The scheme involved repeated computer intrusions against medium and large European companies. Once access to companies' corporate email accounts was secured, the cybercriminals monitored communications to detect payment requests. The company's customers were then requested by the cybercriminals to send their payments to bank accounts controlled by the criminal group, according to the statement.

"These payments were immediately cashed out through different means. The suspects, mainly from Nigeria, Cameroon and Spain, transferred the illicit profits to outside the European Union through a sophisticated network of money laundering transactions."

The operation, coordinated by Europol's European Cybercrime Centre and Eurojust, involved police departments from Italy, Spain, Poland and the UK.

 

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