Tag Archive for: scammer

UPDATE: Another Suspected Internet Scammer, Bamidele Muraina Bags 5Yrs In US Jail

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As the case of a suspected internet scamster, Raymond Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, lingers, a United States district judge, William M Ray II, Thursday sentenced Bamidele Muraina, a 34-year-old Nigerian hacker to five years and ten months in prison.

Muraina was sentenced for hacking into multiple tax preparation and accounting firms located in several states, including a Brunswick, Georgia-based accounting firm, between January 29, 2018, and April 2020.

However, Muraina fraudulently claimed unemployment insurance benefits worth $2.6 million.

In a statement issued by the United States department of justice, northern district of Georgia, obtained by Vanguard, Muraina was convicted alongside a 33-year-old Gabriel Kalembo.

Read the statement below:
 
Nigerian hacker and a repeat offender sentenced to federal prison for unemployment fraud and tax fraud scheme

“Bamidele Muraina, a Nigerian national who hacked into tax preparation firms and filed fraudulent unemployment benefit claims and tax returns using stolen personally identifiable information, and Gabriel Kalembo, a previously convicted fraudster who laundered the fraudulent assets, have been sentenced to federal prison.

“These defendants stole funds from programs meant to assist American workers and families seeking to make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt R. Erskine. “The collaborative efforts of our law enforcement partners were essential to disrupting a sophisticated network of criminals and bringing their leaders to justice.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on us all. The enterprise created by these serial criminals further victimized our citizenry by robbing them of financial resources that were intended to help them,” said Special Agent in Charge Steven Baisel, U.S. Secret Service Atlanta Field Office. “Thanks to our judicial system, justice has been served.”

“Bamidele Muraina engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the Employment Security Department of Washington State (“ESD-WA”) by filing dozens of fraudulent unemployment insurance (UI) claims in the names of identity theft victims who were not entitled to such benefits. As part of the same conspiracy, Gabriel…

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Salisbury Bancorp : What To Do If You’ve Unwittingly Paid a Scammer

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What To Do If You’ve Unwittingly Paid a Scammer

August 18, 2021

Every day, in spite of their best intentions, people get taken in by scammers. A moment of inattention or an utterly convincing story, and you’re suddenly on the hook for real money. Worse, scammers are good at convincing you to pay in ways that give them fast access to your funds, and make it hard to get your money back.

But, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the situation is not always hopeless. Here are some options you might try. With any of them, the sooner you act, the better.

Credit or debit card
This is your ‘best case scenario,’ since many credit card companies will reimburse you for suspected fraud. Contact your credit card company or bank immediately, tell them what happened, and ask for a ‘chargeback’ to reverse the charges.

Gift card, prepaid card, or cash reload card
Contact the company that issued the card and tell them you paid a scammer with the card. Ask if they can refund your money. If the scammer hasn’t already used the card, you may get lucky, so the sooner you contact them, the better your chances.

Wire transfer
If you wired money through a company such as Western Union or MoneyGram, contact the company immediately to report the fraud and file a complaint. You can call MoneyGram’s complaint department at 1-800-MONEYGRAM (800.666.3947), and Western Union’s at 800.325.6000. Although it’s unlikely to happen, you should ask for the wire transfer to be reversed.

Money transfer app
Online peer-to-peer (P2P) payment systems such as Venmo, PayPal and WePay are convenient – and instantaneous. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get your money back. Contact the company behind the app, but if the app is linked to a credit card or debit card, contact your credit card company or bank first.

Remote access
If you were taken in by a tech support scam and gave the scammer remote access to your computer, you should immediately update your computer’s security software. Then run a scan and delete anything it identifies as a problem.

Username/password…

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Before you fill out a CAPTCHA form on a website, know a scammer could be behind it

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The chances are good that you have come across a human authentication system online. In Google’s version, you are usually asked to point out things like cars, traffic lights or fire hydrants. Other websites might use the popular CAPTCHA test.

A word or a phrase is usually displayed in a strange font or typeface. This is done so that computers can’t “read” the letters, as only a human can decipher the code. Interestingly, Google acquired the reCAPTCHA deployment system in 2019.

Cybercriminals are now using the same technology to target potential victims. While the use of CAPTCHA as a scam delivery system isn’t new, the frequency of online deployment has increased. Here’s what to look out for, and how to stay safe.

Here’s the backstory

Visual puzzles aren’t the preferred method for scammers. But a recent report by Proofpoint showed that attacks using CAPTCHA increased by 50 times compared to last year. The technology itself isn’t the scam, but it lends more credibility to the overall scam.

Scams can be delivered through phishing emails or targeted attacks, and CAPTCHA ensures that the criminal targets a real person. It can also be used to determine where the victim is from.

Once the potential victim opens the phishing email, they might be asked to log into a website or service. To make it look more authentic, cybercriminals will insert a CAPTCHA verification. Some people will then assume that the resulting webpage is real, which it most certainly isn’t.

But why are more people falling for the CAPTCHA scam? It might have something to do with working from home.

“Remote workers may have been more distracted and cognitively taxed under the stresses of 2020. Perhaps some were even primed by new remote-work controls to see the CAPTCHA question as a normal security challenge,” the report explained.

Research also indicated that these attacks could have been linked to the Emotet botnet that caused havoc last year. A cybercriminal campaign sent out massive amounts of spam email, many of which often used world…

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The scammer who tried to launder over $500,000 through Business Email Compromise

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A 64-year-old man has pleaded guilty in a Texan court to charges of money laundering after a series of attacks that defrauded companies, including Electrolux, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Read more in my article on the Tripwire State of Security blog.

Graham Cluley