FBI makes massive cyber fraud bust

The Federal Bureau of Investigation took down dozens of people whom they said conspired to steal millions of dollars. The schemes range from targeting government employees to taking advantage of the elderly.

Eighty people have been indicted by a federal grand jury, with most out of the country, for stealing millions of dollars from victims through scam emails. The FBI called the enterprise an extensive criminal conspiracy.

Federal agents arrested 14 people across the United States with 11 in the Los Angeles area alone. About half of the crimes targeted victims through business emails.

If it sounds familiar, it is because it happened within Collier County at least three times in the previous eight months.

WINK News told you on Tuesday how Collier County said foreign scammers tricked the clerk of courts into sending $184,000 to a fake account last December. The scammers did this by intercepting an email from a contractor and requesting a change of bank account. In this instance, the county said it got all the money back through insurance.

The City of Naples is still working to recover the $700,000 it lost through a similar email phishing scam. An attacker posed as a representative from a construction group doing business with the city. The attacker requested a change of bank account through an email and the city paid it through there.

The NCH Healthcare System, the most recent victim of an email phishing scam, had an attacker pose as their interim CEO and got access to dozens of employee email accounts.

While governments and health care facilities are popular targets, the FBI warns you that individuals people with money can be vulnerable to “romance scams.”