A cross-border cybercrime operation was halted this week after law enforcement agencies from 34 countries worked together to arrest approximately 3,500 people and seize approximately $300 million in stolen funds.
According to Interpol, law enforcement agencies have been conducting Operation HAECHI IV for six months. The operation targeted organizations involved in voice phishing, romance fraud, online sextortion, investment fraud, money laundering related to illegal online gambling, business email compromise fraud, and email fraud. – Commercial fraud.
“The seizure of $300 million is a staggering amount and clearly demonstrates the incentives behind today’s explosive growth in transnational organized crime.” Said Mr. Stephen Kavanagh, Director of Interpol Police Services.
Interpol added that authorities in the Philippines and South Korea arrested an unnamed “prominent online gambling offender” in Manila as part of a two-year search operation.
Authorities traced the online fraud to multiple bank accounts and 367 virtual asset accounts. In total, law enforcement was able to block 82,112 bank accounts and seize $199 million in fiat currency and $101 million in cryptocurrency.
Most of the cases that were part of Operation HAECHI IV involved investment fraud, business email fraud, and e-commerce fraud.
The investigation is still ongoing, with police discovering and freezing more assets involved in the operation.
Kim Dong-kwon, Interpol’s national central director for Korea, said Project Haechi will “continue to evolve and expand its scope” as police continue to monitor gangs involved in digital crimes.
“Criminals are trying to gain illegal profits through modern trends, but in the end they will be caught and face their deserved punishment,” Kwon said.
Interpol added that it has issued two purple notices regarding popular scams that countries should be aware of. The first was about a popular trend in South Korea of promoting the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with promises of huge profits before people walk away with their money.
The second notification concerned the use of AI and deepfake technology, which allows cybercriminals to impersonate a person’s family, boss, or lover. British officials said the scheme was used to “deceive, defraud, harass and blackmail victims, including through identity fraud, online sexual blackmail and investment fraud, among other means.”
Cybersecurity experts have been warning for weeks that new voice cloning technology, which can capture and duplicate short clips of a person’s voice, is becoming popular among criminals who use it to hand over money or credentials to victims. I warned you that there is.
Last operation — Hechi III — Last November, about 1,000 people were arrested and about $130 million in virtual currency was seized.
Law enforcement agencies around the world are taking more concrete steps to halt cybercriminal activity worldwide in 2023, as governments face a backlash against cyber fraud that generates huge profits for criminal organizations. .
Workers are often effectively imprisoned on premises with other trafficking victims, have their passports confiscated, and are forced to carry out online fraud. The most common is a “pig-butchering” scheme in which the attackers establish relationships with their targets and build trust over messaging apps. , and trick them into making fraudulent cryptocurrency investments.
The United Nations estimates that more than 200,000 people in Southeast Asia are forced into cyber fraud.
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Jonathan Greig is a breaking news reporter for Recorded Future News. Jonathan has been working all over the world as a journalist since 2014. Before he returned to New York City, he worked for news organizations in South Africa, Jordan, and Cambodia. He previously covered cybersecurity for ZDNet and his TechRepublic.