The Arizona Republic

FBI reports increase in well-crafted cybercrime­s

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wife that I just gave away all the money. She could tell right when I walked in the house and just sat down, and I just couldn’t come up with the words to tell her.”

In 2015, $220 million was lost to wire fraud in the United States. In 2019, losses will surpass $1.5 billion, according to WFG National Title Insurance Company.

In the past, attempts to trick people were often clumsy, FBI agents said. Now they can be sophistica­ted. If people are asked via email to transfer money under a deadline, they should not rush and instead call a known number of the person the email is purportedl­y from to confirm, the agents said.

“The emails have gotten well-crafted and quite detailed. They’re highly tailored to that particular victim,” said Gabriel Gundersen, an FBI supervisor­y special agent with the Oregon Cyber Task Force. “It’s a social engineerin­g piece, where they’re coercing a victim to do something based on an artificial agenda or an artificial timeline.”

In one of the largest cases of its kind in U.S. history, federal authoritie­s in Los Angeles announced an indictment in August charging 80 people, most of them Nigerians, with stealing $6 million in an email scam and money laundering network. George Chamberlin, assistant special FBI agent in charge of the Portland division, said such cases can take years to develop.

Partnershi­ps between victims, local law enforcemen­t, the FBI and its field offices overseas, and law enforcemen­t in other countries is critical to combating this transnatio­nal crime, said Loren Cannon, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Portland office.

In Oregon, losses surpassed $24 million from computer-related crimes from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30 of this year.

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