Fraudsters Play Dress-Up, Make Off With £113 Million

A criminal gang was able to successfully defraud business customers and steal £113 million, but now the group is facing a total of 27 years in jail.

The organized crime network, which posed as bank staff in order to target thousands of Lloyds and RBS business banking customers, reportedly used highly sophisticated social engineering techniques to make off with businesses’ online banking details.

One of the group’s leaders was responsible for cold calling victims while pretending to be an employee of the bank’s fraud department. The information he was able to gain enabled the fraudsters to access hundreds of online business accounts and subsequently steal large sums of money.

From January 2013 to October 2015 the group stole £113 million from more than 750 victims, but only £47 million has been recovered so far.

According to Finextra, one victim alone lost over £2 million, while several businesses are on the brink of going bankrupt as a result of the fraud. Raids performed by police across the U.K. uncovered a wide range of items purchased or stolen by the criminals, including over £120,000 cash and more than 100 bank cards with PINs belonging to victims, as well as gold bars, card readers, dongles, SIM cards, mobile phones and laptops.

“This was the largest covert proactive operation the Met has ever undertaken against cyber-enabled crime,” Andrew Gould, detective chief inspector and head of the Met’s Falcon cybercrime taskforce, explained.

“Customers can protect themselves by always exercising caution when called by someone claiming to be from their bank, even if the number they are ringing from appears to be genuine. Telephone numbers are easily faked. If a bank believes your account is being compromised they will act to prevent this without asking for your assistance.”