Operation HAECHI IV – Worth Talking About
I don’t usually blog about an individual hacker takedown but this one – it is worth talking about.
Certainly not the end of hacking but a significant win for the federales.
Last month Interpol talked about Operation HAECHI IV. It was a six month takedown effort that involved 34 countries and funding from South Korea. Getting 34 countries to cooperate is a challenge alone.
The scam included multiple scams:
- voice phishing
- romance scams
- online sextortion
- investment fraud
- money laundering
- e-commerce fraud
One of the scams tried to get investors to buy NFTs. As a concept any intelligent investor should know that is a scam.
The scams also used AI and deep fakes to make things more believable.
Some cases used voice cloning to impersonate people the victims knew. One of the downsides of AI. It really works and it does not take much source voice to achieve it.
Interpol was able using something they call I-GRIP to freeze some payments in motion. Capturing money is always good.
So what was the result?
Interpol blocked 82,112 suspicious bank accounts. That by itself may not have mattered unless there was money in motion in those accounts, which there may have been.
They seized $199 MILLION in hard cash money.
And, they also seized $101 MILLION in crypto.
Oh, yeah, they also arrested 3,500 people.
Stop for a moment and grasp that. This is not your ordinary bust. Arresting over 3,000 people in one sting and recovering $300 million in cash and crypto. I’d call that a win for the good guys.
Now they need to rinse and repeat a few times and that should get the criminals attention.
Probably the 3,500 arrests don’t mean a lot to the crime bosses unless that are part of the 3,500, but losing $300 million bucks, while it won’t end the world, that cannot make them very happy.
Credit: The Register
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