Through false messages, criminals convinced victims to access pages identical to those of banking institutions. Believing they were on their banks’ websites, the victims entered their access credentials. Upon obtaining this data, the criminals immediately went to the bank’s website, entered the victim’s bank account and scheduled a bank transfer to an accomplice’s account.
Then, posing as a bank employee, they called the victim to inform him that they had detected a suspicious banking transaction. However, to cancel it, they needed the code that the bank would send to her cell phone to prove her identity. And they forwarded the victim to a second false page where they mirrored the fraudulent operation.
Upon seeing the operation about to take place, the victim became even more convinced that he was talking to bank employees. The defendants then quickly confirmed the transfer on the bank’s website. The bank sent the confirmation code to the victim’s cell phone, who then passed it on to the fraudsters thinking that they were canceling the transfer when, in reality, they were giving the code to validate it. In possession of the money, the criminals circulated the funds through various bank accounts between Portugal and Brazil, so that it was laundered and difficult to trace.
According to a statement from the Faro MP, “the success of the crime lies in the speed with which computer operations are carried out through computers that may be housed in a third country and in the credibility that the defendants bring to the dialogue with the victim”. In fact, the organization is well structured and the defendants have specific tasks: there are those who deal with the IT side, those who call victims and those who provide bank accounts to circulate money.
The investigation, carried out by the Judiciary Police, allowed, on April 22, the director of DIAP in Faro to accuse 30 Portuguese men and women, 29 Brazilian men and women, 12 African men and women for the crimes of criminal association, money laundering and computer fraud.
