On December 14, 2018, Aaron Cole was about to buy a new home and received an email he thought was from the title transfer company, directing him to make a deposit of $123,000.
Cole was confused, not realizing that a sophisticated hacker network was likely spying on his communications with the title transfer company, and that although the email looked similar to others he had received from the title transfer company, this time, the email address was slightly different.
A week later, the company called him, advising him it was time to send money. Cole suddenly realized that he had given his family's savings to criminals. The money was from the sale of their former home.
"It was the worst feeling," Cole said Friday. "And then I had to go home and tell my wife that I just gave all my money to scammers. I just sat there and I just couldn't bring myself to talk to her about what happened.".
In 2015, $220 million was lost to fraud in the U.S. In 2019, losses will exceed $1.5 billion, according to WFG National Insurance Company.
In the past, hackers ' attempts to trick people were often crude and clumsy, FBI agents told reporters Friday. Now they can be sophisticated. If users are asked via email to transfer money by a deadline, they should not rush and call a known number of the person the email is supposedly addressed to and confirm the request, the agents said.
“The emails are well-crafted and quite detailed. They are highly tailored to this particular victim,” said Gabriel Gundersen, an FBI special agent with the Oregon Cyber Task Force. “It’s a piece of social engineering, where they coerce a victim into doing something based on an artificial agenda or an artificial timeline.”.
In one of the largest cases of its kind in U.S. history , federal authorities in Los Angeles announced in August that 80 people, most of them Nigerians, were charged with stealing $6 million in a wire fraud and money laundering ring . George Chamberlin, an FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Portland division, said these cases can take years to develop.
Partnerships between victims, local law enforcement, the FBI and its field offices abroad, and law enforcement in other countries are critical to combating this transnational crime, said Loren Cannon, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Portland office.
In Oregon, losses exceeded $24 million from computer-related crimes from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 of this year. For all of last year, $23.5 million was stolen, the FBI said.
Most of the money has been lost in so-called e-commerce fraud scams, in which organized crime groups trick victims into making wire transfers to bank accounts controlled by the criminals.
Cole, from the Portland suburb of Oregon City, was lucky. His title transfer company, WFG National Insurance Company, hired him — for the same amount he lost — to be a spokesperson to warn others about cyber scams.
