Multimillion-Dollar Business Email Fraud Gang Arrested

International law enforcement has disrupted a massive business email compromise gang thought to have targeted hundreds of victim organisations over the past few years. 

The FBI has announced that 65 people were arrested as part of an international law enforcement crackdown on Business Email Compromise (BEC) attackers, which started in September 2021 and lasted three months.  

The US Department of Justice along with international law enforcement partners carried out Operation Eagle Sweep, a name referring to the takedown of the hacking gang, over a three-month period. 

Starting in September 2021, the operation has resulted in the arrests of 65 suspects, including twelve in Nigeria, eight in South Africa, two Toronto residents in Canada and one in Cambodia. Toronto Police Services arrested the duo, who are accused of having tried to divert more than US$16 million from victims across the United States and Canada in cheque fraud and BEC scams.

Operation Eagle Sweep targeted BEC scammers law enforcement believed to be responsible for targeting roughly 500 US victims and causing losses totalling $51 million. 

Among those arrested were Oluwasegun Baiyewu of Houston, Texas, and Leo Omorogieva Eghaghe of Lagos, Nigeria, who are thought to have been involved in an attack on a Puerto Rico-based renewable energy supplier and a $4.5m BEC money laundering conspiracy. 

The operation comes after a number of previous law enforcement tried to curb this type of activity through arrests, including one in 2018 that led to the arrest of 74 suspects worldwide and one in 2019 that resulted in 281 arrests.
Despite BEC being a prevalent type of attack, it continues to cost firms millions with the recently released Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) showing that BEC (and email account compromise) victims reported nearly $2.4 billion in losses in 2021. Operation Eagle Sweep follows Operation Wire Wire in 2018 and Operation reWired in 2019, which resulted in the arrests of more than 300 individuals for their suspected involvement in BEC schemes.

The real challenge in defending against this form of attack is that it is difficult to detect. BEC is typically carried out when legitimate business email accounts are compromised through social engineering techniques and used to conduct unauthorised transfers of funds.

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