A Washington State public hospital has become the latest victim of cybercriminals. A gang which operates from Ukraine and Russia stole $1.03 million from the hospital with abet of more than 100 people based in the United States. The accomplices were hired by the criminals through the ‘work-from-home’ job racket. The criminals have been operating such a scam for the past five years.
According to a publication dated April 19th by The Wenatchatee World, the attack was carried out on a Cascade Medical Center managed Chelan County Public Hospital No. 1. According to the publication, the heist removed an estimated $1.03 million from the hospital’s payroll account. The money which was mostly sent to Midwest and East Coast banks ended up in 96 banks accounts.
The hospital oblivious of the current state of cybercrimes did not pay any attention to several calls to a reporter who was trying to alert the hospital of the crimes against its bank account. The reporter went ahead and contacted two people who had unsuspectingly been recruited by the Eastern Europe gang. They had reported to having been used to help launder more than $14,000 which had been stolen from the hospital’s accounts.
According to Jesus Contreras one of the unwitting accomplices, he had been unemployed for more than two months. The 31-year-old man from San Bernardino, Calif., apparently received an email from Best Inc. in the email, the company purported to be based in Melbourne, Australia. It further said that it’s in software development and that it had discovered Contreras’ resume on Careerbuilders.com. Contreras was told that he was well suited for a work-from-home position in the company. His main task would be to forward payments to software developers who were working with Best Inc.’s abroad partners.
He was asked whether he was available to start on the job right away. The other thing needed was a home computer to start working. The pay was 8% of all the transfers he made. Having been out of work for so long, he said he was available to start on the job. His previous job was at an airplane parts company where he was in the inventories section.
Contreras boss at Best Inc. was a woman who had a European accent. Her name was Erin Foster. She interviewed Contreras over the phone and asked him about his past work experience and his job-life balance expectations. He was immediately hired and his first task was to produce a report detailed report on the commercial real estate market in Southern California. According to Contreras, the reason for this first assignment was because Best Inc. was thinking of starting up an office in the Southern California region.
The Monday that followed (April 22), a short while after he had submitted the research assignment, Contreras received his supposedly first assignment of wire transfer. He was to take the $9,180 which had just been deposited into his account and send it to four accounts at the Western Union and MoneyGram in nearly equal portions. After taking care of the transfer fees, he was left with around $100.
Later, Contreras was beating himself because the deal seemed to be too good to be true. However, having been out of work and bills piling over including those of his dad who had been hospitalized, he figured that he didn’t have much to lose by taking up this job. Little did he know he was to be part of a huge cyberheist.
Luckily for the victims and Contreras, he hadn’t withdrawn any of the little cash he had ‘earned’. Bank of America swiftly moved in later and froze his account and took everything in it. At that very moment, the treasurer’s office at Chelan County was struggling to recoup as much as it could.
However, by the time the story went to press; only$133,000 of the stolen funds had been recovered. It was estimated that it would take around 30 days to know how much the cyberheist actually cost the Chelan Hospital.
Although undersized, yet significant, is the fact that Contreras was never able to spend any of his insubstantial gains. Bank of America, Contreras’ financial institution, froze his account and took hold of the insignificant funds left in the account. Meanwhile, the Chelan County treasurer’s office was struggling to claw back the fraudulent transfers. According to press reports, roughly $133,000 of the lost funds had been recovered so far, and it was thought that it’d take at least 30 days to learn how much was actually lost.
