Google & Facebook both fell victim to a phishing scam to the tune of $100M

[Master Disaster]

You just gotta laugh at this one.

 

Facebook & Google have fallen victim to the same phishing scam sending the scammer $100M between them.

Quote

In March, it was reported that a Lithuanian man had been charged over an email phishing attackagainst "two US-based internet companies" who were not named at the time.

 

They had allegedly been tricked into wiring more than $100m to the alleged scammer's bank accounts.

 

On 27 April, Fortune reported that the two victims were Facebook and Google.

To be fair to both companies this was a very complex scam, the scammer ever faked email addresses so it looked like the emails were coming from a legitimate company.

Quote

The man accused of being behind the scam, Evaldas Rimasauskas, 48, allegedly posed as an Asia-based manufacturer and deceived the companies from at least 2013 until 2015.

 

"Fraudulent phishing emails were sent to employees and agents of the victim companies, which regularly conducted multimillion-dollar transactions with [the Asian] company," the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said in March.

 

These emails purported to be from employees of the Asia-based firm, the DOJ alleged, and were sent from email accounts designed to look like they had come from the company, but in fact had not.

 

The DOJ also accused Mr Rimasauskas of forging invoices, contracts and letters "that falsely appeared to have been executed and signed by executives and agents of the victim companies".

 

"We detected this fraud against our vendor management team and promptly alerted the authorities," a spokeswoman for Google said in a statement.

It seems like both Google & Facebook have recovered most (if not all) of the money but obviously both are remaining tight lipped about the specifics

Quote

"We recouped the funds and we're pleased this matter is resolved."

 

However, the firm did not reveal how much money it had transferred and recouped.

 

Nor did Facebook - but a spokeswoman said: "Facebook recovered the bulk of the funds shortly after the incident and has been cooperating with law enforcement in its investigation."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39744007

 

Holy shit, you gotta admire the cajones on this guy. Screw scamming the little fish, go straight for the sharks.

 

Just proves that no one is safe from a complex enough scam, even 2 of the biggest names on the internet.

[Mr.Meerkat]

Bahahahahahahahahahahahah  

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Bahahahahahahahahahahahah  

That's my reaction to but I'm wondering if there's not maybe a small amount of playing victim to bait the scammer here? Is it at all possible that the authorities asked them to send money with the intention of using the bank to trace it so they could ID the guy behind it or have I been watching to much TV?

[Syntaxvgm]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

That's my reaction to but I'm wondering if there's not maybe a small amount of playing victim to bait the scammer here? Is it at all possible that the authorities asked them to send money with the intention of using the bank to trace it so they could ID the guy behind it or have I been watching to much TV?

no. That's a PR disaster for all companies involved. No companies holding millions of users data would willingly fake the appearance of falling for a phishing scam. 

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Syntaxvgm said:

no. That's a PR disaster for all companies involved. No companies holding millions of users data would willingly fake the appearance of falling for a phishing scam. 

Fair enough, I can see how this wouldn't exactly go down well at the board meetings.

[Syntaxvgm]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

Fair enough, I can see how this wouldn't exactly go down well at the board meetings.

"Any other stupid ideas? "

Hand goes up

"Jim if it's putting the dickspin gif on the front page put your hand down"

hand goes down

[WkdPaul]

This was posted already.

 

The discussion can be continued in the original thread;