SCARS™ Commentary: Risk To Victims Is Increasing

Victims Are Ever More At Risk Of Prosecution And Litigation Over Their Silence And Failure To Report Their Scams

IMPORTANT CHANGES IN LAW ENFORCEMENT AND LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR VICTIMS

You may not have known it but more and more victims are being held accountable for the scams they are engaged in.

This almost always applies to those that DO NOT REPORT scams but are discovered as a part of a police investigation.

This is an important distinction and why we always recommend reporting these crimes to your local police, so you are on record as a victim and not an accomplice.

Individual scam victims can be tried under money laundering laws – because in simple fact almost all lie to their bank or money transfer agency claiming they personally know their scammer (the recipient) when they do not. This is money laundering and wire fraud.

Scammers that use unsuspecting MULES place them at risk because they are an unwitting accomplice to the scammer’s crimes. Especially if they find out and never report the scammer! Many of these have been prosecuted over the last year – prosecutors are losing patience with MULES especially that do not come forward and report these scams so they can be stopped early. They can be charged with a large number of crimes and face the complete loss of everything they have if they do not come forward and they can also face civil litigation as well from the other victims they helped to defraud.

Business scams increasingly place the employee or officer that triggered the scam or attack at risk. Employees that did not report or tried to hide their involvement can and are being sued by their employers, and god help a subcontractor who has an employee that triggered a scam or other attack that resulted in losses for their clients.

As You Can See, Scams Are No Longer Something That Victims Can Hide From In Denial

We live in a digitally connected world where everything has a trail back to you. You can deny it but eventually, there will be an investigation that leads back to you. How you initially reported the crime or not can be the difference between you facing charges or just being a witness against the scammer and their accomplices.

You now have a very clear choice: either report the crime or face being labeled a criminal yourself! Turn over the information to your local police and the FBI (or national police) or incur the liability that comes from trying to cover it up!

Yes, just doing nothing can be considered “Obstruction of Justice” depending on the case and circumstances.

Reporting The Crime Is Not An Option, It Is Your Duty And Obligation!

The 95% of victims who did NOT report their crime are directly responsible for the growth of scams. It is not too late to change this and report yours. Plus it will help you overcome the guilt that comes from silence.

What would you rather have? A sword hanging over your future? Or a report on an event in your past that releases you from guilt?

Remember, we are only committed to telling you the truth, not fairytales! Sometimes the truth is brutal but it is still something you need to hear and internalize. You need to understand the consequences of your actions, not just from the scam but afterward too!

An Example Of A Victim Sued By Their Employer:

Ex-employee sued by firm after falling for BEC scam

Scottish custom publishing house Peebles Media Group is suing a former employee, Patricia Reilly, for losses stemming from nearly £200,000 of the company’s money she transferred to a business email compromise (BEC) fraudster.

BEC fraud is a huge business that the FBI has attributed to over $12 billion in losses worldwide since 2013. The scam has many variants but typically involves a fraudster impersonating a senior officer over email and instructing a subordinate to urgently transfer cash to a purported supplier’s or business partner’s account that is actually the fraudster’s account.

In this case, the scammers emailed Reilly in early October 2015 and impersonated the company’s managing director, Yvonne Bremner, according to reports in British media. The ongoing civil case is being heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

In total, Reilly, a credit controller at Peebles Media, made four payments to the fraudsters totaling £193,250. The company’s bank has since reimbursed £85,000 of the firm’s losses and Peebles Media is suing Reilly for the outstanding £108,000.

The fraudsters appeared to have some knowledge of Peebles Media’s operations, sending Reilly emails impersonating Bremner during a week in which the managing director and Reilly’s line manager were on holidays. BEC scammers are known to intensively study targets, including compromising email accounts to monitor communications between employees, suppliers, and partners.

According to The Sunday Post, Reilly liaised with her line manager for the first payment request of £24,800. The line manager made that payment via Britain’s Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) payment system.

Three days later, by which time Bremner and the line manager were on holidays, Reilly received another email purporting to come from Bremner that asked for £75,200 to be transferred online. She made several payments in the following days totaling about £108,000.

Reilly was fired in November 2015 for alleged gross misconduct and subsequently lost an appeal over her dismissal.

Peebles Media alleges that the fraudulent emails were not sent from Bremner’s email account. The company claims it told Reilly that no bills were due to be paid during the two weeks that Bremner was away.

The company also says that Reilly had read a warning about fraud when she accessed the firm’s online banking account. Reilly claims the company never provided training about online fraud.

Bremner, who was on holiday in the Canary Islands when the fraud occurred, says she wasn’t aware that Reilly could make payments since she did not have access to the firm’s current account. Bremner discovered the bogus emails upon her return from her holiday.

As per the BBC, the fraud was discovered by a colleague of Reilly’s when the colleague logged onto the firm’s online bank account and noticed a fraud warning.

Peebles Media’s lawyers accused Reilly of being negligent and are arguing that she was in breach of her duties to exercise reasonable care that she owed her employer. The firm alleges Reilly should have recognized the emails were suspicious.

BEC fraudsters have pulled off elaborate scams in the past that have even fooled employees of multinational tech giants, where employees could be expected to be more savvy to online fraud. And Reilly isn’t the first employee to be fired for falling victim to the fraud. A CEO of a supplier to Boeing and Airbus was fired in 2016 after wiring €52.8m to fraudsters.

Source Article: Duped, sacked, now sued: Firm demands £108k from worker tricked by fraud gang – The Sunday Post

THINK IT OVER

The Next Victim Prosecuted Or Sued Could Be You!

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