The arrests, part of a multinational investigation involving police officers in 15 countries, target a notorious gang of so-called money mules that the hackers use for their work.
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QQAAZZ mimicked the structure of a sophisticated corporation, according to a U.S. federal indictment unsealed Thursday. Mid-level managers organized networks of bank accounts and shell companies in several countries, while money mules shuffled millions of dollars in stolen funds back into the hackers – with QQAAZZ saving as much as 50%.
“Financially motivated cyber criminals rely heavily on the services of money launders like the QQAAZZ network to gain access to funds stolen from victims,” said Richard Winstanley of the UK’s National Crime Agency in a statement after police made arrests and searched 40 different homes across Europe.
According to the agency, six people were arrested in London and another 14 people arrested in an operation coordinated by Europol across Europe, the US and Australia.
Arkady Bukh, a lawyer representing one of the defendants, Maksim Boiko, a Russian national who was arrested in March, said his client was aggressively fighting the charges. “We look forward to going to court to prove his innocence,” said Bukh. A lawyer for Aleksejs Trofimovics from Latvia, who was charged in 2019, declined to comment. Attorneys representing the other defendants could not be identified.
Some of the arrests came earlier, including British, Georgian and Latvian nationals detained in London last year. Five of these men were released when the investigation continued. Another man, 32-year-old Arturs Zaharevics, is awaiting extradition to the United States, where he has been charged by the FBI.
Money mules are a staple of cyber criminals as hackers debunking victims’ bank accounts in the US and Europe don’t want to leave a trail for police to follow. In the past, hackers have deployed foreign exchange students and even hired ignorant accomplices via the Internet.
However, the QQAAZZ operation was far more sophisticated, according to the recent Justice Department indictment. Gang members set up shell companies with forged Polish or Bulgarian documents and then opened accounts on behalf of these companies with various European banks.
The group maintained hundreds of accounts with banks in Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Turkey and the UK, and frequently switched stolen funds between multiple accounts before converting them to an untraceable cryptocurrency that was then made available to the hackers.
“In total, cyber criminals attempted to transfer tens of millions of dollars to accounts controlled by QQAAZZ, and QQAAZZ successfully laundered millions of dollars stolen from victims around the world,” the indictment said.
Many of the victims were small businesses or religious organizations, which tend to be easier targets than large companies with sophisticated cyber defenses.
Victims whose money was laundered by QQAAZZ included a synagogue in Brooklyn, a Michigan-based auto parts maker, and an architecture firm in Miami, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice.
© 2020 Bloomberg
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