Police across Europe have arrested 49 suspected members of a cyber-gang accused of stealing EUR6 million through man-in-the-middle fraud.
In an operation coordinated by Europol and Eurojust, authorities in Italy, Spain and Poland swooped on 58 properties, seizing laptops, hard disks, telephones, tablets, credit cards and cash, SIM cards, memory sticks, forged documents and bank account documents.
The 49 people arrested are accused of being part of a gang that used social engineering and malware to get into the computer systems of medium and large European companies. The crooks then accessed corporate email accounts, looked for payment requests and contacted the firms' customers asking them to send payments to bank accounts controlled by the gang.
Around EUR6 million was taken in "a very short time", says Europol, with the money moved outside of the EU through a sophisticated network of money laundering transactions.