By now most of us have heard about scams designed to take advantage of vulnerable customers, manipulating them to part with their hard-earned savings. Some of these involve marriage proposals, requests for emergency funds or donations to bogus charities. All of these are collectively referred to as social engineering scams (“Scams”).
The real challenge presented by Scams is that its victims are often too embarrassed or ashamed to contact the police or tell their families, once they’ve realised, they’ve been hoodwinked. In some European countries, a real effort is being made to try and detect Scams, so that funds can be intercepted, before they are transferred to some account controlled by a criminal gang.
This case study looks at one of these Scams and examines the complex web of associates, counterparties and financial institutes used by it. Over a 10-year period, this Scam defrauded over USD$200 million from almost 1.4 million North American consumers. Further facts suggest that this Scam has been “repurposed” and run in other jurisdictions including Germany, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Norway, New Zealand and Australia. Most recently, this Scam has…
