The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) today announced the
successful closure of an on-line banking fraud involving fake
documents worth $3.9 billion and spoofing web sites created to look
like popular banking and financial sites.
The ICC’s Commercial Crime Bureau carried out investigations and
reported that fraudsters had published fake European banking
guarantees on at least 29 different web sites to lure potential
clients to invest in projects and finance schemes.
The web addresses gave the impression that the scam sites were
run by either Euroclear Bank, the international clearing system for
the settlement of transactions in securities and Eurobonds, or
Bloomberg, the information services provider.
"We were informed that advance fees of hundreds of thousands of
dollars were paid for the issue of these fraudulent guarantees, and
the web sites were used to validate the documents," explained Jon
Merrett, Assistant Director of ICC's Commercial Crime Bureau and
Cybercrime Unit. "The amounts represented on the fraudulent sites
ranged from 50 million to over 400 million dollars."
In addition to being used to procure advance fees, reported
Merrett, these guarantees were to be used in bogus High Yield
Investment Programs (HYIP) which promised high returns from low
risk financial instrument trading.
The bank guarantees were confirmed to be fraudulent, and
Euroclear Bank and Bloomberg were alerted to the intellectual
property breaches. CCU co-ordinated the approach to the fraudster's
ISP who complied with their request to shut down the offending
sites. Four of the fraudsters, based in San Francisco and Lugano,
Switzerland, have been arrested.
"By shutting down the fraudulent sites in cases like this, we
are not only protecting investors from scams, but also helping
companies such as Bloomberg to maintain their reputation," said
Merrett. "The big risk is that these frauds could rock the trust
that the banking, finance and insurance industries are built
on."
