Interpol Dismantles €140 Million BEC Fraud Network Impersonating Executives Across Spain, Portugal and Panama
Police have dismantled an international criminal network that earned €140 million through sophisticated Business Email Compromise (BEC) fraud involving investment scams and the substitution of corporate correspondence. The coordinated operation took place across three countries — Spain, Portugal, and Panama — and led to the arrest of four suspected organizers.
According to investigators, the group managed more than 800 bank accounts and 120 corporate accounts, using 67 intermediaries to facilitate the withdrawal and laundering of illicit funds. The criminals primarily employed the BEC scheme, in which fraudsters impersonate company executives or send forged invoices to convince employees to transfer money to attacker-controlled accounts under the pretext of legitimate business transactions.
Once received, the stolen funds were immediately dispersed across numerous accounts. These rapid chains of transfers passed through banks in multiple jurisdictions, deliberately complicating efforts to trace the ultimate beneficiaries. Law enforcement confirmed that at least €94 million moved through this laundering infrastructure.
Investigation and International Cooperation
The investigation began after authorities detected signs of money laundering linked to 19 related companies. Following the identification of the main suspects, police launched an international operation supported by Interpol and Europol.
Officers conducted searches at six locations in Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona, and Porto. During the raids they seized 15 computers and more than 170 smartphones, devices believed to have been used to orchestrate thousands of fraudulent transfers.
Authorities also froze €3 million in assets, which will be returned to victims. Law enforcement agencies consider the network fully dismantled and its principal organizers detained.
Related articles
Russian Court Bans Advertising for Renting and Selling Third-Party Bank Cards
The Chertanovsky District Court of Moscow has ruled that information promoting the rental and sale of other people's bank cards is prohibited for distribution in Russia. The decision targets a website and two Telegram channels that offered users the chance to temporarily lend or permanently sell their cards to third parties. Such schemes are commonly used to recruit drops who help receive, transfer, and cash out stolen funds. The court found that these proposals violate the rights and legitimate interests of citizens. Owners of the resources could not be identified, and domain registrars were foreign companies. VTB had previously warned about these schemes in 2024, noting that card owners risk ending up on bank blacklists, losing access to financial services, and facing criminal charges. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has also highlighted that transferring bank cards and accounts to outsiders can lead to criminal liability, with fraudsters particularly targeting children and teenagers.
Smart Engines Patents AI Method to Detect Holographic Security Features in Documents Using Visible Light Only
Smart Engines has developed and patented a new technique that identifies optically variable devices such as holograms on identity documents without requiring ultraviolet illumination. The approach relies on a standard document scanner equipped with six independently controlled LEDs that capture a sequence of six images under different lighting angles while the document and camera remain stationary. After dark-current correction and calibration against a white reference sheet, the system normalizes the images and computes per-pixel color-vector standard deviation to generate an OVD map. A simple thresholding and region-of-interest analysis then produces a binary verdict indicating whether a genuine holographic element is present. The method effectively distinguishes original documents from high-quality color prints, photocopies, and physical replicas that cannot reproduce the angle-dependent color shifts of real OVDs. All processing occurs with existing scanner hardware, demonstrating that algorithmic interpretation of controlled illumination can add a new authenticity signal without additional optics or spectral channels.
YooMoney's YuScan Automates E-commerce Risk Assessment Scanning Up to 1,000 Sites Per Hour
YooMoney has detailed the inner workings of its YuScan service, an automated auditing tool designed to help banks and payment providers identify websites that conceal prohibited or high-risk activities. Since 2020 the system has processed more than 550,000 merchant applications without resulting in any fines for servicing illegal operations. YuScan builds comprehensive site maps, executes JavaScript, and handles dynamic content using Playwright combined with Camoufox to evade modern anti-bot protections such as Cloudflare. The crawler is built on Scrapy with FastAPI and PostgreSQL, then applies ML models, embeddings, and LLMs to analyze text, images, reviews, and external signals including Roskomnadzor registries and WHOIS data. The automation has reduced manual review time dramatically, allowing half of compliant merchants to begin accepting payments within 24 hours. YooKassa now offers the service to other banks through NSPK, the operator of the Mir payment system.
Scammers Pose as Employers to Remotely Lock iPhones and Demand Ransom
Russian police have warned of a new social engineering scheme in which fraudsters impersonate potential employers to gain control of victims' Apple devices. The attackers instruct targets to sign out of their personal Apple accounts and authenticate using credentials supplied by the supposed employer. Once the device links to the fraudster's account, the scammers can remotely lock the iPhone or iPad and demand payment for unlocking it. Authorities emphasize that paying the ransom does not guarantee recovery of the device and may lead to further extortion demands. Victims are advised never to enter third-party Apple credentials on personal hardware and to contact Apple Support with proof of purchase if a device is already locked. The scheme exploits the Find My and Activation Lock features built into iOS devices.