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'Syrian war victims' dupe Dubai residents in online scam

Businesses in the country are vulnerable to cyber crimes as few invest time or resources to enhance their cyber security.

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Scamming Dubai residents by pretending to be Syrian war victims or "seducing" lonely people for money - online scam artists are finding new ways to target people in the emirate.
Residents have told Khaleej Times they are receiving emails from scammers pretending to be refugees and are asking for bank account details to "help transfer funds".
A cyber security and intelligence firm, BAE Systems, said that the UAE, especially businesses in the country, are vulnerable to cybercrimes as very few of them invest in time or resources to enhance their cyber security.
One Pakistani resident in Dubai, Faisal Umer, said he almost fell for a tragic story that was fabricated by an online scam artist.
The email was by someone who called himself 'Major Mike Moore' and had found a sealed metal box in Aleppo with $14.6 million inside it. He said the money was believed to be embezzled by the Syrian authority or fleeing rebels. He asked for help to get the money transferred.
"It's always the same story - they find money and they need some kind of help to get the money transferred, the catch is that they'll ask for money first so they can open a bank account or need funds to purchase a tool to open the metal box. First, it was the Nigerian money scam and now they're using the more recent issues around the world to lure people into their trap," Umer said.
Another expat Akram Syed said he often receives scam emails from women trying to find a "serious man through the internet".
One of the emails he received was from a woman who called herself Olga. She wrote: "I want to destroy the loneliness and to find the good person who, as well as me, will want to share all pleasures of life, so he should give me his email address."
"These guys are really hard to catch and what's more horrifying is that that we don't know the limit of the technologies they use. These scammers are good with devices and humour. Scam artists are protected by firewall and if we try to pinpoint their location it bounces back to different countries. I don't think there is any way to stop these things," Syed said.
Simon Goldsmith, the director cyber security and financial crime of Middle East, BAE Systems, said that research conducted by analysts have raised "significant concerns regarding the vulnerability of organisations in the UAE to cybercrime".
He pointed out that 70 percent of senior executives of UAE companies said they expected cyber attacks to increase, yet only 40 percent said they were increasing time and resources allocated to cyber security, the lowest of all the eight countries surveyed.
"At its heart, this is good old-fashioned fraud for financial gain. What makes it a 21st century fraud is that it started with an email. However, the important distinction to be drawn between online scams against individuals such as the one you detail and the more sophisticated and elaborate schemes operated by professional criminals is one of scale," Goldsmith said.
"As the experience of the criminals grows and the potential scale of the gains increase, the way in which fraud is conducted becomes increasingly more planned, organised and automated."
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com

Phone scams also still exist

Etisalat has often warned customers to beware of scammers pretending to be employees of the telecom firm and calling up residents to "give away" a Dh1 million prize.
However, just last year, a Belgium expat who had recently moved to Dubai at the time lost about Dh8,500 to a phone scam.
He had received a call from a man pretending to be an Etisalat employee and said that he had won a Dh1 million lottery. The scammer had the expat's Emirates ID information and was able to convince him of wiring him money.
"I wired him Dh5,000 and sent him several Etisalat recharge cards. They said they needed the money to activate a bank code so they could send the money," he said. "They were well organised and did their homework."
Goldsmith said that scammers often try to find and exploit the weaknesses of organisations and individuals and trick people into giving in sensitive information.
"The news and even Hollywood are full of stories of criminals and nations employing hackers to infiltrate organisations and steal money or sensitive data.  However, there is another method which has always been a valuable part of their kitbag, a long time before email and the internet were invented. Scammers may be relatively unsophisticated compared to large criminal gangs or state-sponsored hackers but they too often exploit the major weakness that is found in each and every organisation: human psychology. Using a variety of media, including phone calls and social media, attackers trick people into offering them access to sensitive information," Goldsmith said.