Cybercriminals targeted a North Carolina fuel distribution firm and made away with more than\u00a0$800,000. Neither the victim nor their bank noticed the criminals stealing the money for five long\u00a0days. They only became aware of the crime after being alerted by a reporter. Had both parties been\u00a0vigilant of the modern type of cybercrimes, the loss would certainly have been much less.<\/p>\n
J.T Alexander & Sons Inc. which is based in Mooresville, N.C was targeted by cybercriminals on\u00a0May 1st. On that day, the criminals stole by sending $5,000 and $10,000 lumps to mules. The money\u00a0was sent to \u2018work-from-home\u2019 mules that were to help the criminals in the laundering process. The\u00a0criminals operated a sophisticated system whereby they paid their mules through automated\u00a0clearing house (ACH). The payment was in batches deducted from the payroll of J.T Alexander.<\/p>\n
Investigators established that the criminals conducted this malicious crime several times. They were\u00a0sending the stolen funds through the corrupted ACHs to mules who were over 60. A number of the\u00a0mules had been recruited by a notorious Eastern Europe cybercrime gang based in Ukraine and\u00a0Russia. Some cybercrime security experts refer the gang as \u2018BackOffice Group\u2019. This gang has been\u00a0very prolific and has been involved in major cyber crimes spanning over four years. The gang can\u00a0be tied to the $1.03 million theft which targeted a Washington State-based nonprofit making\u00a0hospital.<\/p>\n
According to David Alexander who is the oil firm\u2019s president, the loss of the funds was quite\u00a0colossal and quite painful. He, however, added that the firm was working on ways it could recover\u00a0some of the stolen money. The company pays its 15 employees through the ACH system every two\u00a0weeks. A normal J.T Alexander payroll batch totals to utmost $30,000. It is unnerving to see how\u00a0the hackers managed to steal cash worth more than a year\u2019s salaries using this seemingly safe\u00a0system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cybercriminals targeted a North Carolina fuel distribution firm and made away with more than\u00a0$800,000. Neither the victim nor their bank noticed the criminals stealing the money for five long\u00a0days. They only became aware of the crime after being alerted by a reporter. Had both parties been\u00a0vigilant of the modern type of cybercrimes, the loss would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[79,67,62,48,49,80,50,74,52,76],"class_list":["post-7271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-news","tag-cyber-heist-insurance","tag-illegal-wire-transfers","tag-krebs","tag-malware","tag-money-mules","tag-payroll-theft","tag-phishing","tag-phishing-email","tag-russian-cyber-heist","tag-static-authentication"],"yoast_head":"\n