This article has been indexed from CyberCrime & Doing Time
It seems nearly every week that the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (the GNECB) announces a new arrest in Operation SKEIN. In a newly released featured interview, Ireland’s “The Journal” had Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Lordan, and Superintendent Michael Cryan of the Garda National Economic Bureau discuss what they described as “a pandemic boom in scams.”
Chief Supt Lordan says “fraud has changed from a cottage industry to a global organized crime epidemic.”
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| Det Supt Michael Cryan and Det Chief Supt Pat Lordan lead the GNECB (photo from The Journal, click image for full story) |
“The GNECB now believes, and arrests have proven this, that financial fraudsters, particularly an organised crime group with origins in West Africa are operating in Ireland.”
Cryan says: “It is at the highest level of scams. At the bottom of the ladder you have the money mule, a boy or girl letting money be laundered through their account. Then there’s the mule herder, who we have found in Ireland — they are the next level up, acting as a handler for the mules. There is a next level up then, managing operations across the region. From examining phones we’ve seized we found messages from West Africa set to people in various countries. They send out a message to the herder looking for an account, for example, that can manage two or three thousand euro.”
Lordan says they have managed to recover more than 25 million Euros by freezing accounts before the full amount could be withdrawn, including $500,000 stolen from an American
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Read the original article: Operation Skein: The Irish Garda Target Nigerian BEC Criminals