How ‘internet scraping’ fraud has become a quick payday for scammers

Professional scammers are using sophisticated techniques such as word searches and phrase searches to automatically trawl the internet and social media for people who may be venting their frustrations about a service or product online.

The type of fraud that targets people in tense situations where they flag a grievance on social media is known as “internet scraping”.

Detective Superintendent Michael Cryan of the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) said scammers have become increasingly adept at changing their operations and styles of fraud in order to stay one step ahead of police forces trying to shut them down.

“In this instance, [internet scraping] they are searching for someone who has expressed a frustration or is seeking help, and they take advantage of that.

“They know that person is more vulnerable than they normally would be, and emotions might be running high, and they seize that and try to profit from it,” he told the Irish Independent.

“The sense of urgency is common to a lot of these scams, and the scammers are clever enough to match an English speaker with an English speaker, and a German speaker with a German, because they are more convincing.”

This “scraping” of the internet or social media then leads to an initial contact online, and then a follow-up call, where the scammer persuades the victim to reveal some aspect of their banking details or asks them to set up an account where they are told money will be transferred to pay or refund them.

But instead, money is stolen from the victim, and because they authorised the payment, there is little comeback.

“There are scamming warehouses at this type of activity, often using people trafficked from other countries.

“And even if they are only successful in one out of 100 attempts, it’s still a good payday for them. In one case, scammers got €800 in probably less than 15 minutes. These people are very organised,” said Det Supt Cryan.

He said that while gardaí and international police forces do have success in shutting down certain websites used by cyber criminals to shift money around the world, fighting the crime is a constant game of Whac-A-Mole.

“As soon as you shut one part of the operation down, they pop up somewhere else with new techniques. It is something that is constantly evolving,” Det Supt Cryan added.

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