Gardaí warn on fraudsters exploiting war in Ukraine to extract cash

There is "no doubt" fraudsters will take advantage of the war in Ukraine to extract money from Irish people, the head of the Garda's economic crime unit has warned.

Det Chief Supt Pat Lordan said these criminals are growing ever more sophisticated at defrauding businesses and individuals.

The days of fraudsters sending poorly spelled emails in broken English are gone, he said. Modern criminals are able to forge genuine looking invoices which appear to come from a bank, a business partner or a supplier.

Furthermore, most business-to-business scams involve sending invoices for money which is genuinely owed by the victim, making it all the more likely the victim will fall for them, said the senior garda.

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Criminals are gaining access to companies’ computer systems and lurking there for weeks at a time while gathering information on what invoices the firm owes money.

A request will then be sent for these amounts from what appear to be genuine email addresses.

Det Chief Supt Lordan said he is aware of reports of people being scammed by criminals claiming to be raising money to help Ukrainians but that the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau has yet to receive a complaint.

“I have no doubt it will happen. Criminals are very adept at changing very quickly.” He advised people to donate money to trusted charities “and don’t always believe what you see on social media”.

He said “obviously there is a need to support charities now and always. But it’s no harm to raise the awareness out there.”

Although scams are growing more sophisticated, last year was marked by a dramatic fall in business frauds in the Republic at a time when almost all other types of fraud increased. The Garda attributed this drop not to a decline in criminal activity but to increased awareness among businesses and customers of the risk of fraud.

Costly scams

Almost €6 million was stolen in business email frauds last year, a 48 per cent drop compared to 2020.

“Unfortunately, no business is immune to this type of scam – the victims of business email compromise fraud range from very small businesses to large corporations. The consequences of falling for a scam such as this can be catastrophic and may even result in the closure of businesses and redundancies. All employees should be aware of this fraud and receive training to avoid this type of scam,” he said.

In most business email fraud cases the money is transferred abroad before being quickly withdrawn by the criminals. However, victims can reverse fraudulent transactions if they contact their bank and gardaí quickly.

Recent incidents of business email fraud include a criminal who, in 2019, took over the email of a legitimate solicitor and managed to steal €177,000 which had been handed over by a client for the purchase of a house. All but €3,000 was recovered by gardaí.

In 2020 the criminal bureau recovered €2 million of stolen money from an account in Hong Kong. In the same year it identified an international fraud gang operating from Ireland which had stolen €26 million in recent years. Several gang members have since been charged.