Pharmacy
In order to address the serious and growing problem of illicit online pharmaceutical sales, the NCFTA established the Pharmaceutical Fraud Initiative (PFI) in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit (CIRFU) and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The purpose of this initiative is to provide a neutral forum wherein private industry and law enforcement can exchange information regarding emerging and ongoing threats to the pharmaceutical industry, while utilizing the NCFTA generated target/trend assessments to support risk mitigation pursuits. Given that the United States is clearly a targeted market for online pharmacies, the primary objective of the Initiative is to identify criminal actors and organizations that are engaging in pharmaceutical fraud. Analysis is aimed at presenting these targets to private industry for prospective law enforcement action and civil mitigation.
NCFTA Cyber Alerts
Email Compromise and Wire Fraud
The NCFTA, along with its law enforcement and industry partners, has observed that cyber criminals are gaining access to compromised email accounts and leveraging the relationship between the email account holder and their financial advisor to request unauthorized wire transfers. The criminals either use the existing email address or slightly change the email address by adding or supplementing a letter or number. The criminals then typically attempt to socially engineer the advisor through stories of hardship or loss in order to justify the wire transfer.
Once the criminals have verified the amount in the account, they request that funds be sent to bank accounts in the US, Australia, and Malaysia. Some of the funds sent to US and Australian accounts have ultimately been sent to Malaysian accounts. Some of the money mules were recruited by romance scams on dating websites. Banks, brokerage firms, and credit unions of all sizes have been affected by this scam.
Please see http://www.ic3.gov/media/2012/EmailFraudWireTransferAlert.pdf for additional information on this scam and guidance on how to report such incidents to law enforcement.