Cybercrime rate on the rise as hackers cash in

THE Fiji Financial Intelligence Unit has received 45 cybercrime cases in the past five years, of which 15 cases were related to internet banking fraud.

FIU director Razim Buksh said the internet banking fraud cases involved unauthorised transfer of funds totalling more than $120,000 from customers’ local bank accounts.

“An additional 16 cases relating to e-mail spoofing were also reported to the FIU between 2013 to 2015,” Mr Buksh said.

“These cases involved approximately $900,000 out of which more than $500,000 was lost by local businesses to international cybercriminals using email spoofing technique.

“Funds were remitted to fraudsters bank accounts in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

“Whilst the financial institutions try their best to be more vigilant, these transactions are usually under the guise of genuine transactions.

“On one occasion, one of the financial institutions through their quick actions taken was able to save a business entity from remitting US$30,000 ($F61,715) to a fraudster’s bank account and on three occasions did not facilitate attempted transactions.”

Mr Buksh made the comments in response to this newspaper’s queries on cybercrimes.

Yesterday, this newspaper reported on how a local prominent university was hacked and the hacker managed to change his academic records. The hacker was also paid by other students to change their records.

“The ultimate goal of cybercriminals is to make financial gains or to obtain money from these victims,” Mr Buksh said.

“Cybercriminals have a sophisticated network and they work day and night on their schemes of obtaining a financial gain through the use of internet.”

As an intelligence agency, the FIU has powers under the Financial Transactions Reporting Act to access bank accounts of customers and investigate any suspicious transactions.

The FIU also has powers to monitor such bank account activities and where applicable, temporarily freeze such bank accounts to allow the law enforcement authorities to thoroughly investigate the case.

The unit has advised the public to exercise extreme caution when conducting financial transactions online.

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