The leader of an alleged network of internet scammers popularly known as ‘yahoo yahoo boys’, was nabbed in Port Harcourt on Sunday,  by  the International Police Organisation, (Interpol) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC).
According to the Head of the EFCC’s Cybercrime Section, Abdul Chukkol, the 40-year-old Nigerian man identified as Mike, was arrested in connection to an alleged scam of about £45m (USD 15.4 million).
Mike, believed to be the head of an international criminal network of about 40 individuals across Nigeria, Malaysia and South Africa which provide malware carried out the scam.
It was reported that they compromised email accounts of small to medium businesses around the world including those in India, Malaysia, Â US, Australia, Canada, Romania, South Africa and Thailand, with the financial victims mainly other companies dealing with these compromised accounts. And also had contacts in China and Europe who provided bank account details for the illicit cash flow.
The major types of scam run by the suspect,  targeted businesses were payment diversion fraud, where a supplier’s email would be compromised and fake messages would then be sent to the buyer with instructions for payment to a bank account under the criminal’s control  and ‘CEO fraud’ in which the email account of a high-level executive is compromised and a request for a wire transfer is sent to another employee who has been identified as responsible for handling these requests.
It was further reported that forensic examination of devices seized by the EFCC allegedly showed that he had been involved in a range of criminal activities including romance scam, business e-mail compromise and BEC.
It was however gathered that the suspect and an unnamed 38 year old accomplice, who are facing charges of hacking, conspiracy and obtaining money under false pretenses, are currently on administrative bail.
