Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Massive North Korean Fraud Planted Tech Workers, Hit 300 U.S. Companies - Cambridge’s wealthiest college to divest from arms companies

SCOOP: Ahead of last week's @Eurovision, the Israeli government hired expert(s) to set up voting communities across dozens of countries aimed at pumping up the popular votes for the 🇮🇱 song. The effort was successful as the song won 2nd place in the popular vote


Identity crime - This form of fraud entails additional risks beyond monetary loss, including compromised credit ratings and the arduous process of reclaiming financial security

Australia has passed new national digital identity laws. This is what that means for you


The West Australian man was charged after being linked to several purchases of the Genesis Market dark web marketplace, which was shut down by an FBI-led investigation in April 2023.

The man stripped $17,500 from a super fund and other bank accounts from a couple and opened several bank accounts in the name of another man while also racking up mobile phone debts and naming him as the owner of a car involved in four traffic infringements.


Commonwealth credentials are being stolen or breached at an ever-increasing rate, with agencies referring some 25,000 Australians to an identity support service last financial year.

Commonwealth referrals to identity theft support soar


TIL that some tiny bits of bitcoins are more valuable than others. “Those produced in the year bitcoin was created are considered vintage, like a fine wine. Other coveted sats were part of transactions made by bitcoin’s inventor.”


Opinion | Poynter Report special edition: The Pulitzer Prizes

Monday was one of the biggest days of the year in journalism. It was not a typical year for the Pulitzers.



 Sussexes’ Archewell charity could be suspended over late tax returns Telegraph


Global players feature in Dubai property leaksDawn (Micael T). More property as money-laundering.


Predicting police misconduct — evidence for the bad apples theory?


Massive North Korean Fraud Planted Tech Workers, Hit 300 U.S. Companies

The Justice Department announced Thursday multiple arrests in a series of complex stolen identity theft cases that officials say are part of a wide-ranging scheme that generates enormous proceeds for the North Korean government, including for its weapons program.

The conspiracy involves thousands of North Korean information technology workers who prosecutors say are dispatched by the government to live abroad and who rely on the stolen identities of Americas to obtain remote employment at U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies, jobs that give them access to sensitive corporate data and lucrative paychecks. The companies did not realize the workers were overseas.

Justice Dept. makes arrests in North Korean identity theft scheme involving thousands of IT workers


How age verification laws could affect you, no matter how old you are

SOURCE: ABC NEWSTOPIC: COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY



HOW THE UK SECURITY SERVICES NEUTRALISED THE COUNTRY’S LEADING LIBERAL NEWSPAPER Declassified UK


UK auditors are rubbish at their jobs

I posted this video to YouTube this morning. In it I argue that UK auditors are rubbish at their jobs. Major audit failures – on
Read the full article…


From PropOrNot to New Lines: How Washington is Weaponizing Media Alan MaCleod, MintPress


Exclusive: Cambridge’s wealthiest college to divest from arms companies Middle East Eye


Gen Z is struggling financially more than Millennials did at their age: Study 


Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 11, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. 

Four highlights from this week: Bank scammers using genuine push notifications to trick their victims; How VISA is using generative AI to battle account fraud attacks; War Zone Surveillance Technology Is Hitting American Streets; and Negating all VPNs may have been possible since 2002.

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Cost-cutting advisers the bright spot in professional services

 Cost-cutting advisers the bright spot in professional services

Consultants who specialise in helping clients reduce costs are in high demand amid the uncertain economic and geopolitical environment, a bright spot for an otherwise slow advisory market.


Advisers – from strategy firm Boston Consulting Group, big four firms KPMG and PwC and consultant marketplace Expert360 – are increasingly being asked to carry out cost-cutting programs that range from optimising the use of existing assets, upskilling and reducing staff numbers, to digitisation and automation.
Boston Consulting Group’s Monika Saunders says interest in cost reduction advice has been a consistent theme in her work as clients seek to make sure they are operating as efficiently as possible. Louis Trerise 
This emphasis on operational efficiency was on display on Tuesday when Telstra announced it would cut 2800 jobs, or about 10 per cent of its staff. It follows Crown cutting 1000 jobs at the end of April and the major consulting firms cutting hundreds from their ranks this year.
Another sign of growth in the area is the move by Accenture to buy renowned “cost-out” operational consultancy Partners in Performance. The deal, revealed in The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday, is expected to be finalised next month.
Boston Consulting Group’s Monika Saunders, an expert in “cost-out” consulting, said interest in cost reduction advice had been a consistent theme in her work as clients seek to make sure they are operating as efficiently as possible.

So that’s all around optimising how you maintain your equipment, increasing the throughput that you get, getting more out of your assets that you have,” Ms Saunders said.
It is also around “really looking at your support functions – so your finance, HR, external affairs, [the] legal teams et cetera ... and understanding ‘am I getting the maximum out of this?’ And ‘are they supporting my business in the best possible way?’.
“It’s almost like getting the licence to grow. You need to show that you can manage your money well [to] your shareholders so that they give you the licence to then invest elsewhere.”
Ms Saunders, who has worked at the strategy consulting firm for 15 years and also focuses on advising mining, agricultural and manufacturing companies, was promoted to the equity-owning position of managing director and partner in the firm’s Melbourne office a fortnight ago.

‘Digitisation, optimisation’

It isn’t just BCG. Bridget Loudon, the CEO of consultant marketplace Expert360, said consultants with technology-based optimisation skills, which help trim costs, were in high demand.
“A significant and growing portion of the work that Expert360 and our workforce is working on right now is large programs around automation, digitisation and optimisation,” Ms Loudon said. “This is in contrast to previous programs around growth, innovation and expansion.”
The fast-growing platform is now being used by more than half of the ASX 200 to hire and manage consultants.
Expert360 CEO Bridget Loudon says demand for optimisation experts has grown. 
It is a similar outlook at big four firms KPMG and PwC. KPMG’s Karen Parkes, a partner in the big four firm’s customer and operations consulting service, agreed that client demand for digitisation was increasing.
“Our clients are experiencing challenging times, with relentless cost pressures, crowded competition and increasing customer expectations ... many of our industrial clients are shifting their business model to become more sustainable by digitising their services and operational processes,” Ms Parkes said.
PwC’s national mining leader, Marc Upcroft, said the push to reduce emissions was forcing miners to reassess their ongoing costs.
“We are asking a lot from our mining companies on decarbonisation – both in transforming their operations to reduce emissions and to invest in growth projects for the minerals that the world needs to decarbonise,” Mr Upcroft said.
“This logically puts pressure on costs across the business, which miners need to respond to, for example through technology, supply chain efficiencies and deferring non-essential capex.”

Political turmoil

The demand for all the different flavours of “cost-out” advice has held up even amid a downturn in the overall advisory market as public and private sector organisations cut back on calling in consultants.
BCG’s Ms Saunders said that for her clients, the turmoil included political issues such as November’s US presidential election through to the war in Ukraine and continuing tensions in the Middle East; economic issues such as higher interest rates; and environmental issues such as the effect of new taxes and levies around decarbonisation that are being put in place by governments around the world.
Originally from Germany, she joined the firm in 2009, after completing a Master’s in Finance from the University of Cambridge. It was the year after the global financial crisis had hit the world economy and “not the best year to start” her professional career. Like now, the focus then was on cost-out.
“I had quite a few friends coming out of [the master’s course] that went into investment banking, including to Lehman Brothers, which then collapsed just as they were about to start. So [there] was a lot of turmoil,” she said.
She chose BCG because it offered her an opportunity to “pressure-test myself a bit more, [to get] into a high-intensity job, see the world [and] work on the most important problems ... I got the opportunity to work on a different series of problems that companies were facing at the time, a lot of it around cost pressure, a lot of it around trying to be leaner and preparing for the world to come.
“[I] worked on the topics that you dream of working on … for me, the focus was probably more on cost-[reduction] than on growth at the time.”

‘Excitement, variety’

Ms Saunders moved to Australia in 2015 after spending time at the University of NSW as a visiting student while she was pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy at the Luiss Guido Carli University in Italy.
“I did a PhD in business model innovation and it probably was a bit of a test to say, ‘do I actually want to go into academia or do I want to go back into industry?’,” she said. “I think I realised for myself that while I enjoy [studying], I think I prefer working more ‘hands on’ on tangible problems, rather than one problem very, very deep.”
She is now one of the 51 managing directors and partners and roughly 450 consultants at BCG Australia and New Zealand.
Asked why she had stayed at the firm for all these years, she was quick to respond: “[To] be honest, I like the excitement of the variety of projects that I get to work on. I like the people we work with. And I think it’s very hard to get that same calibre of people, consistently, elsewhere. And so ... there’s just never been a better option.”
She also likes the types of clients she encounters in her specialist area, a sector “that might not be seen as the sexiest around”.
“I personally, actually, really like the clients I get to work with because [they are] typically down to earth, they are often very passionate about their job.”
Find out the inside scoop about Accenture, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC and McKinsey. Sign up to our weekly Professional Life newsletter.
Edmund Tadros leads our coverage of the professional services sector. He is based in our Sydney newsroom. Connect with Edmund on Twitter. Email Edmund at edmundtadros@afr.com.
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Scams Australia: Aussies ‘not alerted’ to massive fraud network

 Australian Federal Police (AFP) have charged two Iranian nationals with the alleged importation of approximately 250kg of methamphetamine in multiple consignments last month.


Justice Dept. makes arrests in North Korean identity theft scheme involving thousands of IT workers


Scams Australia: Aussies ‘not alerted’ to massive fraud network

A crime network operating out of Serbia used mass advertising campaigns on Facebook and elsewhere online, featuring fake celebrity endorsements, to draw people into fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes.

EXCLUSIVE By DAVID MURRAY MAY 20, 2024 



The corporate regulator has been accused of failing to alert tens of thousands of Australians who lost more than $200m to an inter­national scam syndicate, as German police reveal they gave authorities a comprehensive database of victims at serious risk of losing more.

The corporate regulator has been accused of failing to alert tens of thousands of Australians who lost more than $200m to an inter­national scam syndicate, as German police reveal they gave authorities a comprehensive database of victims at serious risk of losing more.
A crime network operating out of Serbia used mass advertising campaigns on Facebook and elsewhere online, featuring fake celebrity endorsements, to draw people into fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes. It is still active.
Australia was by far the most affected country, making up more than one-third of the 90,000 victims from 90 countries worldwide. There were 14,000 victims in Canada and 13,000 in Europe.
Oliver Hoffmann, head of the state police economic crime unit at Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany, is leading the charge against international scam syndicates targeting Australians.
Oliver Hoffmann, head of the state police economic crime unit at Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany, is leading the charge against international scam syndicates targeting Australians.
Oliver Hoffmann, head of the German police cybercrime unit investigating the syndicate, in an exclusive interview with The Australian said raids on four Serb­ian call centres in January last year uncovered evidence of the worldwide theft of €350m.
He revealed that the Australian Securities & Investments Commission was subsequently provided with data in June last year on 34,000 Australian victims who lost a combined €130m.
Impacted countries were sent evidence from the raids so that they could contact victims, protecting them from further scams, Mr Hoffmann said. “This was the reason why we have sent it out – to prevent further crime,” he said.
Files shared with ASIC included victims’ names, phone numbers, emails, physical addresses, identity documents, notes on their background, and total losses, Mr Hoffmann said.
Scammers’ names and aliases in each individual case were also provided.
German police have sent letters to all victims in their own country, warning them that they have been dealing with “an active criminal group” and advising how to file a criminal complaint.
ASIC had not contacted victims at all, says private cyber crime investigators IFW Global, representing 30 people who contacted the firm after realising they had been scammed. “This is evidence of fraud relating to 34,000 Australian victims,” IFW senior investigator Mark Solomons said.
“ASIC has had its work done for it. Why aren’t Australian authorities contacting people to warn them and get them to file criminal complaints?”
How scammers are taught to 'target' Australians
The revelations come after The Weekend Australian unveiled how Chinese-run “scam universities” in Southeast Asia were training enslaved workers to fleece Australians out of their life savings in “pig butchering” or romance scams, named after the process of “fattening up” victims before the “kill”. 
Another major front in the fraud epidemic is with crypto­currency finance scams being run out of call centres in Serbia, Cyprus, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania, Moldova and The Philippines.
Australian victims of the Serb­ian scam operation include a 61-year-old Perth carer looking after her mother with dementia who had $250,000 stolen.
An 80-year-old retired Brisbane businessman was defrauded of $3m, and a 63-year-old retired Brisbane electrician and father lost $1.6m.
Actor Eric Bana, seen here in the movie Chopper, was used in scam ads that defrauded a NSW motel owner.
Actor Eric Bana, seen here in the movie Chopper, was used in scam ads that defrauded a NSW motel owner.
A 65-year-old NSW nursing assistant and grandmother borrowed from relatives and lost $275,000, and a 66-year-old Brisbane accountant and grandfather lost $1.3m after being duped by a fake MSN news story featuring cricketer Shane Warne before his death in 2022.
The German police letters to victims, shared with The Australian, state that “the fraudsters used websites ‘Infinity CapitalG’, ‘Topmarketcap’, ‘Richmondsuper’, ‘Iron Bits’ and many more, and lured people with high investment returns in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.” Mr Hoffmann said. “We informed them: ‘You have been the victim of a fraud, don’t further invest’.”
A copy of one of the letters German police sent to 3000 German victims of an international scam syndicate. Picture: Supplied
A copy of one of the letters German police sent to 3000 German victims of an international scam syndicate. Picture: Supplied
Most Australian victims lost only an initial deposit in the hundreds of dollars, and many may have been unaware they were in the grip of a major scam, putting them at risk of greater losses, Mr Hoffmann said. 
Victims were also at risk of identity fraud and prolific “recovery” scams, where fraudsters pretend to assist in regaining funds, sometimes posing as officials such as police.
Mr Solomons said Australia was “a very rich and very easy target”, and the case was a glaring example of a failure to curtail scams and to take down the organised crime kingpins behind them who were relentlessly targeting the ­nation from abroad.
The Serbian call centres have been linked to Israeli crime groups, who branched out overseas and moved into crypto­currency after the “binary options” industry was banned in Israel in 2017.
“Australians are wealthy, friendly and open to strangers. But the biggest issue is a lack of will on the part of law enforcement to do anything about it,” Mr Solomons said. “What has the biggest effect of all is countries showing a willingness to prosecute and convict offenders. That’s the missing ingredient in Australia. So why would these people care?”
Mr Hoffmann’s economic crime unit in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg is conducting a major investigation into the syndicate, despite there being only about 3000 German victims.
Australian cricket legend Shane Warne was used in scam ads before his death in 2022. Picture: Gareth Copley/PA Images via Getty Images
Australian cricket legend Shane Warne was used in scam ads before his death in 2022. Picture: Gareth Copley/PA Images via Getty Images
Law enforcement agencies from other countries that had also contacted victims since being provided data from Germany had generated valuable information for the investigation, Mr Hoffmann’ said. “This could be done as well from Australia. Maybe they have the right pieces for us to complete the picture.” 
A separate source familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ASIC was “not interested” in becoming involved in the investigation. It’s also understood there had been no response from Canadian authorities despite thousands of victims there.
The syndicate’s operations were raised in an IFW Global submission in April to a federal parliamentary inquiry looking at law enforcement’s capability to respond to cyber crime. The inquiry will hold hearings this week.
ASIC did not answer questions from The Australian but a spokesman said the agency was “committed to co-operating and sharing information with other agencies”.
Thousands of scam websites had been knocked out by ASIC since July last year, he said. 
The agency is “one of several” tackling scams, which mostly originate overseas where it is “almost impossible to trace or recover” ­stolen funds.
“ASIC’s powers apply to Australian entities and conduct that takes place in Australia, but this power does not extend to foreign jurisdictions,” he said.
“That’s why we are focusing our efforts on scam detection and disruption, stopping scams at the source before they can harm Australian consumers.”
Mr Hoffmann said the scam syndicate appeared to have completely avoided the US, with not a single case of fraud detected there.
The US has been proactive in going after and extraditing international scammers, creating a hostile environment that may be serving as a deterrent.
Mr Hoffmann said it was possible the syndicate targeted countries where “they know that the law enforcement is not strong or not interested”.
The four call centres in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, had teams that operated in Australian time zones to specifically target the country.
Computer screens in the centres listed employees of the day and month for callers who inflicted the most damage, and kept a running total of the amount stolen.
Another major investigation led by Mr Hoffmann’s unit led to raids on 12 scam call centres in ­Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Lebanon last month.
Known as Operation Pandora, it involved more than 100 police officers deployed around the clock in Baden-Wurttemberg since December last year monitoring 1.3 million scam phone calls in real time.
Victims were contacted as the fraudsters tried to extract money, preventing 6000 crimes.
Mr Hoffmann said it wasn’t sustainable for one agency to lead the fight against global scam networks, and called for greater international co-operation.
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