Spanish Police have dismantled an international gang dealing with developing & marketing software to commit bank fraud through ‘phishing’ and ‘smishing.’
Fruit of this alleged activity, the gang laundered the profits through crypto-currencies and the purchase of luxury goods.
According to a Policía Nacional press release, the bust was carried out jointly with German police authorities and coordinated by EUROPOL, resulting in the arrests of three of the top gang, after searches carried out in Spain and France.
Officers located approximately 1.5 million euros in crypto-assets and verified economic damages exceeding four million euros.
This criminal network operated under the model known as ‘Crime as a Service,’ meaning that it provided other criminals with tools and stolen bank credentials to commit fraud on an international scale.
Police investigations began in 2022 when this criminal organization was found to be active in several European Union countries, including Spain, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany, as well as international connections in other countries worldwide.
The network harvested confidential bank data through phishing campaigns and stored the stolen information on restricted platforms under their control. From there it was sold on to third-party criminals.
Phishing Kits: through messaging channels, the suspects offered access to so-called “phishing kits,” which were tools that included panels containing victims’ bank data and access credentials. The network had harvested bank details from around 2,000 bank customers just from German banking entities.
In addition to marketing tools to facilitate fraud, the suspects also directly executed real-time phishing campaigns, through which they managed to obtain the bank credentials of more than 2,000 clients of German financial entities. Furthermore, investigators detected various cyber panels where thousands of items of sensitive data were stored.
Finally, the analysis of financial movements and cryptocurrency transactions made it possible to track and locate approximately 1.5 million euros across different digital wallets. Throughout the investigation, the verified economic damage exceeds four million euros, although investigators believe the actual figure could be “considerably higher” due to the existence of numerous victims in different countries who may not have reported the events yet.
(News: Spain)
Keywords: Phishing Network Busted, Europol, German Police, France, Crypto-Currencies, Crime as a Service
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