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Police have successfully smashed a syndicate which was suspected to have deceived $660,000 from the customers of a local bank via bogus electronic mails (e-mails).

Between September 17 and October 6 this year, 12 bank customers received similar "phishing" e-mails purporting to be sent by the local bank. The "phishing" mails required the victims to click on an embedded hyperlink connecting to a fraudulent website. Another screen would then pop-up and ask the victims to verify their account information by inputting their Internet banking account's user name and password.

The bank informed Police of the case which is being investigated by the Technology Crime Division of the Commercial Crime Bureau (TCD/CCB).

Enquiries revealed that the bogus website was set up and those "phishing" e-mails were sent to Internet users worldwide. At the same time, accomplices were recruited by the mastermind through ICQ, e-mail and job seeking websites. They were asked to use their own bank accounts to receive the stolen money from the unauthorised transfers via the e-banking of the victims.

The accomplices were allowed to retain five to 10 per cent of the stolen money as a reward while the remaining amount of money was forwarded to some other overseas bank accounts by remittance.

Officers of the TCD/CCB so far arrested eight men and three women aged between 21 and 58 in an operation starting from September 23.

Three of them aged from 27 to 33 were charged with theft and they had appeared in courts. Two of them will appear in Kowloon City Magistrates' Courts on October 18 and December 6 while the other in Eastern Magistrates' Courts on November 18.

Three other arrested persons are still being detained whereas the remaining five were released on Police bail pending further enquiries.

A Police spokesman reminded the public not to access their Internet banking accounts through hyperlinks embedded in e-mails or Internet search engines. They are advised to access their e-banking accounts by keying in the website addresses or bookmarking the genuine website.

So far this year, a total of 23 bogus bank websites were found.

Operation is still on-going.

Police Report No. 3

Issued by PPRB

End/1800 hours, Thursday, October 7, 2004 (MM/CA)

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