A malignant e-mail campaign has been discovered by using messages with piano theme to commit Advance Fee fraud (AFF)-scorching.
These campaigns, active since January 2024, mainly focus on students and faculty at North American colleges and universities.
However, industries such as healthcare and food and beverage services have also been affected. According to Proofpoint, who has discovered the campaign, more than 125,000 E emails have been observed this year in connection with this scam cluster.
In these misleading e -mails, the fraudsters offer a free piano that often quote personal circumstances, such as the death of a family member. Respondents are then forwarded to a fake shipping company, also checked by the scammer, which requires the payment for delivery before the piano is sent.
The scammers accept payments via various methods, including Zelle, Cash app, PayPal, Apple Pay and Cryptocurrency. Moreover, they try to collect personal information such as names, addresses and telephone numbers of their victims.
A remarkable discovery in this study was a Bitcoin portion that was used by the fraudsters, who has processed more than $ 900,000 in transactions.
The substantial transaction volume suggests that multiple threat factors may use this wallet for different scams.
Despite the uniformity in the e -mail content, the sender addresses, consisting of combinations of names and numbers, vary, and usually use free e -mail services. These campaigns also contain various iterations of E -mail content and contact addresses.
In order to gain further insights into the scammers, Proofpoint has conversations with them, with the help of a detour service managed by the researcher to record the IP address of one perpetrator and device information. Researchers have led to this data to assess that part of the operation is located in Nigeria.
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Advance fraud, also known as 419 scams, usually includes scammers who request a small in advance in exchange for a larger, promised payment.
These schedules often contain complicated stories about inheritance, vacancies or other lucrative offers. As soon as the victim sends the first payment, the scammers stop all communication and disappear with the money.
This fraud is highly dependent on social engineering and various payment methods. That is why Proofpoint warned the audience to remain vigilant.
“People must be aware of the common techniques used by threat actors and remember that if an unsolicited e -mail sounds too good to be true,” the company advised.