Wednesday, April 23, 2025
HomeCyber Security NewsOperation reWired - 281 Email Scammers Arrested Worldwide for Attacking Hundreds of...

Operation reWired – 281 Email Scammers Arrested Worldwide for Attacking Hundreds of Business and Individuals

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

The FBI and federal authorities announced that they have arrested 281 Email Scammers worldwide in a coordinated effort by law enforcement agencies. The Operation dubbed Operation reWired is a multi-agency effort to dismantle scammers around the globe.

The operation results in 281 arrests, including 167 in Nigeria, 74 in the United States, 18 in Turkey and 15 in Ghana. Authorities also arrested scammers form France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom (UK).

According to FBI, the sweep resulted in the seizure of nearly $3.7 million and the disruption and recovery of approximately $118 million in fraudulent wire transfers.

- Advertisement - Google News

What is BEC?

BEC defined as Business Email Compromise, the scam targets both businesses and individuals who perform legitimate transfer-of-funds requests. The scam mostly targets employees associated with finance departments.

“The Department of Justice has increased efforts in taking aggressive enforcement action against fraudsters who are targeting American citizens and their businesses in business email compromise schemes and other cyber-enabled financial crimes,” said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

In the last four months, authorities have arrested 74 people in the United States and 207 others have been arrested overseas for alleged financial fraud.

“The consequences of this type of fraud scheme are far-reaching, affecting not only people in the United States but also across the world,” said Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale.

It appears the attackers have stolen “more than 250,000 identities and filed more than 10,000 fraudulent tax returns, attempting to receive more than $91 million in refunds,” said Chief Don Fort of IRS Criminal Investigation.”

Types of BEC Scams

  1. Romance scams
  2. Employment opportunities scams
  3. Fraudulent online vehicle sales scams
  4. Rental scams
  5. Lottery scams

How to stay safe

  1. Have a unique Email address.
  2. Do not open any attachments without proper validation.
  3. Don’t open emails voluntary emails.
  4. Use Spam filters & Antispam gateways.
  5. Never respond to any spam emails.
  6. Use Two-factor authentication
  7. Keep all software updated.

You can follow us on LinkedinTwitterFacebook for daily Cybersecurity and hacking news updates.

Gurubaran
Gurubaran
Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.

Latest articles

Hackers Exploit Cloudflare Tunnel Infrastructure to Deploy Multiple Remote Access Trojans

The Sekoia TDR (Threat Detection & Research) team has reported on a sophisticated network...

Threat Actors Leverage npm and PyPI with Impersonated Dev Tools for Credential Theft

The Socket Threat Research Team has unearthed a trio of malicious packages, two hosted...

Hackers Exploit Legitimate Microsoft Utility to Deliver Malicious DLL Payload

Hackers are now exploiting a legitimate Microsoft utility, mavinject.exe, to inject malicious DLLs into...

Cybercriminals Exploit Network Edge Devices to Infiltrate SMBs

Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) continue to be prime targets for cybercriminals, with network...

Resilience at Scale

Why Application Security is Non-Negotiable

The resilience of your digital infrastructure directly impacts your ability to scale. And yet, application security remains a critical weak link for most organizations.

Application Security is no longer just a defensive play—it’s the cornerstone of cyber resilience and sustainable growth. In this webinar, Karthik Krishnamoorthy (CTO of Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface), will share how AI-powered application security can help organizations build resilience by

Discussion points


Protecting at internet scale using AI and behavioral-based DDoS & bot mitigation.
Autonomously discovering external assets and remediating vulnerabilities within 72 hours, enabling secure, confident scaling.
Ensuring 100% application availability through platforms architected for failure resilience.
Eliminating silos with real-time correlation between attack surface and active threats for rapid, accurate mitigation

More like this

Hackers Exploit Cloudflare Tunnel Infrastructure to Deploy Multiple Remote Access Trojans

The Sekoia TDR (Threat Detection & Research) team has reported on a sophisticated network...

Threat Actors Leverage npm and PyPI with Impersonated Dev Tools for Credential Theft

The Socket Threat Research Team has unearthed a trio of malicious packages, two hosted...

Hackers Exploit Legitimate Microsoft Utility to Deliver Malicious DLL Payload

Hackers are now exploiting a legitimate Microsoft utility, mavinject.exe, to inject malicious DLLs into...