The South African Police Service (SAPS) has bust a syndicate of seven people who have allegedly defrauded South Africans of at least R55 million.
The alleged criminals were arrested between the end of March and 2 April, but have yet to appear in court and so cannot be named. SAPS started raids on the alleged suspects in February.
SAPS colonel Tummi Golding says the police have been actively targeting phishers as one of its priorities to stamp out crime. While she cannot disclose which institutions were targeted by the phishers, she says SAPS uncovered R55 million worth of defrauded money.
Golding says SAPS is working with the banking sector, which is providing it with information, to track down thieves and “the outcomes are positive”. “South Africans are a little laid back, because they dish out confidential information.”
Crime tools
SAPS also confiscated three laptops, two desktops and several cellphones that were being used by the thieves. One of the suspects arrested in Sunnyside, Pretoria, is thought to be a ringleader of the international crime gang's South African operation.
During the raids, the suspects were found in possession of counterfeit cards, counterfeit card manufacturing equipment and card data that linked them to skimming of debit and credit cards.
The arrest has been hailed as a major blow to a phishing scam ring that is believed to have tricked a number of people into giving up their online banking credentials.
Absa has been assisting the police and aided it in busting the ring. Christo Vrey, managing executive for the bank's digital channels, says he is confident a major breakthrough in the phishing scams has been made.
He explains that phishing activities are generally difficult to trace, since the fraudulent e-mails are often sent from computers that have been hacked, and are situated in different countries than the hackers and victims.
“I am happy that the scammers who created pain for our customers, South African citizens and our international investors are being tracked down and arrested. This proves that we are fighting back and not just passively warning our customers to beware of phishing e-mails,” Vrey says.
“I hope the arrests will serve as a warning to scammers out there that Absa will go to great lengths to protect our customers,” he adds.
Working together
Lee-Anne van Zyl, CEO of FNB Online, says general trends seem to indicate a rise in phishing activities. She explains that FNB works closely with the Commercial Crimes Unit within SAPS to provide sensitive information and tip-offs, which has been instrumental in arrests.
Van Zyl adds that FNB also provides evidence for prosecution and shuts down fake sites regularly, and is geared to detect and shut down sites within hours.
Earlier this month, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre's Commercial Crime Office's GM Susan Potgieter estimated that R50 million was lost to phishing in SA each year.
Steven Ambrose, MD of World Wide Worx Strategy, says the arrests could just be the tip of the iceberg. He says credit card scamming cost the economy hundreds of millions a year.
“The whole fraud issue has been hugely underreported to the public because the financial institutions do not believe it is in their best interests to make the amounts known.”
However, Ambrose says the police and financial institutions are working together to clamp down on the criminals.
Focus area
Government has released a draft cyber crime policy, which was the subject of a Parliamentary debate on Friday morning.
In February, communications minister Siphiwe Nyanda released the Department of Communications' draft policy on cyber security. The policy is government's first real attempt to proactively combat cyber crime as Internet penetration rises.
One of the key aspects of the policy is Nyanda's plan to introduce national and sector-based computer security incident response teams.
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