Thieves Flood Victim’s Phone With Calls to Loot Bank Accounts

[n2doc]

By Kim Zetter May 12, 2010 | 5:17 pm | Categories: Crime


Bank thieves have rolled out a new weapon in their arsenal of tactics — telephony denial-of-service attacks that flood a victim’s phone with diversionary calls while the thieves drain the victim’s account of money.

A Florida dentist lost $400,000 from his retirement account last year in this manner, and the FBI said the attacks are growing.

A spokeswoman for the Communication Fraud Control Association — a telecom industry organization — told Threat Level that although fraudulent transfers have been halted in a number of cases, the losses are increasing.

“I know it’s in the millions,” said Roberta Aranoff, executive director of the CFCA. “It has exceeded a million dollars easily.”

Last November, Robert Thousand Jr., a semi-retired dentist in Florida, received a flood of calls to several phones. When he answered them, he heard a 30-second recording for a sex hotline, according to the St. Augustine Record.

In December, he discovered that $399,000 had been drained from his Ameritrade retirement account shortly after he’d received the calls. About $18,000 was transferred from his account on Nov. 23, with a $82,000-transfer following two days later. Five days after that, another $99,000 was drained, followed by two transfers of $100,000 each on Dec. 2 and 4. The thieves withdrew the money in New York.

more

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/telephony-dos/

[TwilightGardener]

1. Seems like there's an easy fix--no transfers on an account until

the customer is successfully reached by phone, and the institution MUST initiate the call.