Reply To: OCU C)DFE D Week 04 Discussion
In March of 2022, a two-month operation codenamed First Light 2022 was conducted in Lyon, France. During this time 76 countries participated in a crackdown on organized crime groups behind telecommunications and social engineering scams. The scams and fraud included telephone deception, romance scams, e-mail deception, and connected financial crime.
The crime groups would use ads through social media platforms, emails, and text messages offering high-paying jobs, and romance. For example, the crime groups would send out text messages offering high-paying, lucrative jobs for anyone interested. The victim would start out making small amounts of money but to make more they needed to recruit more members and pay more money for those recruit lists.
One example that stood out to me the most was a teenager in Singapore that was forced to pretend he had been kidnapped and sent photos and videos to his parents of himself with fake wounds and blood on his body. The intent was to make his parents send the “kidnappers” a 1.5 million ransom (EUR). The Singapore police were able to rescue the teenager and arrest the men involved.
I have noticed that I have started receiving phishing text messages on my phone stating that my accounts have been compromised, I won a large amount of money from sweepstakes, or my banking information is not up to date and needs to be updated. I know these are all scams but it is amazing to me how much cell phones are becoming easy targets for cybercriminals and hackers to gain access to information and data.
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