Greedy cybercriminal defrauds US companies in email compromise scheme

An Ohio man has been sentenced to over four years in prison and ordered to pay back over $500,000 for his part in an email compromise scheme targeting companies in Mississippi and across the country. Cybercrime doesn’t pay off.

Gabriel Waters, 54, of Chillicothe, Ohio, took part in what the Department of Justice (DoJ) has called “large-scale multi-national business email compromise scams.”

These scams are otherwise called business email compromise (BEC), a form of phishing scheme in which criminals attempt to fool senior or relevant employees into wiring funds or revealing sensitive data.

Waters' part in the scheme focused on money laundering and wire fraud. Whereas scammers overseas spoofed emails that impersonated employees from the affected companies.

This is commonly called phishing, where threat actors impersonate legitimate companies or people, trick their victims into revealing personal information, or making quick wire transfers.

The scammers used these fake emails to trick employees, customers, and partners into sending money to a bank account controlled by the bad actors.

Not only did the scammers impersonate company employees, who were mainly responsible for the company’s finances, but they also bought domain names that look almost identical to the victim businesses.

Waters was integral to the scheme as he could set up bank accounts in the US and receive money from the victims. He then laundered this money before converting the stolen funds into cryptocurrency to send to the other scammers.

The Ohio man will serve 57 months behind bars, followed by five years of supervised release, and an order to pay back $547,000 to his victims.