Largo Business Firm Attacked by Major Cyber Scam

When Largo firm Tech Data was recently targeted by a cyber scam, its fraud manager called the city police for assistance. Nbcnews.com reported on 21st March, 2014 quoting detectives as saying "Investigation leads to the identification of an international deceit scheme ties with Canada and Russian federation."

Notably, Tech Data is a global distributor of IT-products & services based in Largo, Florida, US. Its subordinate in Canada received an order for computer hardware worth $59,805 through Tech Data website recently.

A purchaser with conventional Electronic Commerce credentials placed the order with payment and it was delivered to an address in Leval (Quebec, Canada).

However, Tech Data realized that the order was illegal shortly after it was delivered and an investigation was started in Largo.

Police Officials at Largo checked credentials of the customer and found that they were embezzled together with the banking details. The probe concluded that online criminals took the details from businessmen using a Trojan keylogger malware and operated outside Russian Federation.

Criminals buy various goods using those credentials and send them to remote Canadian places and then hurriedly re-send them to areas in Russia or in Ukraine.

Lara Young, a Detective at Largo, coordinated with local police officials in Canada to obtain a search warrant of a residence in Leval, Quebec to recover computer equipment worth more than $20,000 before goods being shipped overseas, as per news published by newstalkflorida.com on March 21, 2014.

Tbnweekly.com published a statement on 21st March, 2014 quoting Scott Heim, Fraud Manager with Tech Data, as "the company has been dealing with this problem (referring to the attack) within US and Canada for about two years and all major tech distributors are dealing with same activity."

He said that any company providing electronic commerce access to its customers has to defend these types of attacks but such attack on websites of Tech Data is rarely successful.

Heim said "We catch almost all of them and it is less than 1% which get fulfilled."

Canadian authorities said that the investigation will continue with the arrest of two persons.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/31/2014