Don’t wire money by email in the Cayman Islands?

Crooks are obtaining the bank account credentials of customers in the territory by hacking their personal email, and then emailing fraudulent transfer instructions to local financial institutions from the victims’ addresses.

Now the Cayman Islands Financial Crime Unit “does not recommend sending banking details via email,” a unit spokesperson said. “A telephone call to the bank could save hundreds of thousands of dollars and heartache in the long run.”

So far, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been illegally wired from the islands to the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Denmark and other jurisdictions.

“By the time attempts are made to recall the fraudulent wires, the funds have been collected and it is too late,” Cayman News Service reports.

The directions look authentic because the hackers not only are stealing bank account details, but also email addresses and passwords.

“The on-line scammers have used legitimate wire instructions sent by the victims to respective banks via email. Hacking into that electronic correspondence, the internet crooks have got the account numbers, bank balances, scanned signatures and other confidential information,” the news service reports. 

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.