I hacked the company's mail and made an agreement in the name of a supply company

Seizure of a gang «electronic phishing» seized one million dirhams

The Technical Crimes Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department of Ras Al Khaimah Police arrested a gang of three people, who seized one million and 77 thousand dirhams from a company, through electronic phishing, by impersonating the role of a company that the victim company deals with in commercial transactions.

In detail, the Acting Director General of Police Operations in Ras Al Khaimah Police, Brigadier Tariq Mohammed bin Saif, said that the Comprehensive Al Jazeera Al Hamra Police Station received a report from a company working in the field of electronics, stating that it was subjected to a phishing operation, worth 281 thousand euros, equivalent to one million and 77 thousand dirhams, by an unknown person who claimed to be a representative of one of the companies that the victim company deals with on an ongoing basis, after the owner of the company wrote to the victim via e-mail, and the agreement between his company was concluded. And one of the supplier companies, so that the perpetrators of the crime later hacked the company's e-mail, and viewed its contents and purchasing and banking operations, to find an agreement on a pledge of allegiance process in progress with one of the companies for a large amount of money, and accordingly they immediately created an e-mail account similar to the domain of the real account of the supplier company, with a change in the name of the original mail account, and then communicate with the victim company via similar mail, and delude them and convince them that the bank account has been changed, and it has been replaced with a new account, and that Bank transfers for sales operations must be made through the new bank account, so that the victim company completes the sale process, and transfers the amount of money to complete the purchase process in preparation for import and receipt.

Bin Saif explained that the owner of the victim company was surprised a few days later that the agreement was not fulfilled, and that he did not receive the agreed upon by the supplier company, and that he delivered the purchase amounts to a person or company of unknown origin, and not to the concerned company approved in the transactions with his company, to immediately rush to a police station to report that he had been subjected to a phishing operation.

He added: «A working team was formed from the Criminal Investigations Department, trained to deal with technical crimes professionally, and search, investigate, track the accused and infer to determine the location of the perpetrators of the crime, where it was found that they were in one of the emirates of the country, and other operations were discovered, and the entry of huge amounts estimated at millions of unknown origin to the suspicious bank account, and immediately they were reached, and seized in cooperation with the General Command of Dubai Police, and transferred to the competent authorities to take the necessary legal measures on them».

Bin Saif warned members of society and business owners of the multiplicity and development of forms of fraud and phishing, including email phishing, which is e-mails received by the recipient and pushes him to take urgent action, usually during which the fraudster claims to change the bank account and replace it with a new account, so that the victim takes urgent action to transfer the amounts of money to the new account without doubting the credibility of the person or the sender via e-mail.

He called on members of society and companies not to start conducting transactions and bank transfers to pay the amounts of money agreed upon between them and companies and other parties, except after verifying the identity of the representatives of the companies by phone call or meetings in order to preserve rights and property, stressing that fraudsters delude their victims with lies such as closing accounts, changing their names, replacing them with new accounts, or with any of the flimsy arguments to hunt the person or the target party.