Police have arrested two people responsible for a phishing campaign. They sent fake SMS asking to quickly pay a fine, pretending to be Antai, the national agency for processing offenses.
Despite the ever-increasing effectiveness of anti-phishing systems on smartphonesit may happen that you receive an SMS appearing to come from a public body. For example, to claim a fuel allowance or order a Crit’Air vignette. Obviously, these messages are false. The goal is to make you click on a fraudulent link where you enter your bank detailswhich the pirates are quick to recover.
Between 2022 and 2023, such a phishing campaign is rife in France. The message received asks you to pay a fine urgently or face an increase. It is signed byAntai, the National Agency for the Automated Processing of Offenses. As with other scams of the same type, the victim who has the misfortune to give their payment information on the site given in the link quickly sees his bank account empty. Fortunately, the people behind the scam were apprehended by the police.
Those responsible for the phishing campaign with fake fine SMS messages admitted their guilt
Two young men are suspected of having developed and led the campaign. Located in Paris for one and in Roubaix in the North for the other, They are each 19 years old. Between October 2022 and July 2023, they recovered more than 1700 bank card numbers plus the information needed to use it. 78 were used to make purchases on the InternetTHE damage amounting to €19,000. The scammers have resold the remaining data to other hackers.
Read also – The parking scam with fake QR Codes is making a comeback
The investigators of the cybercrime brigade of the Paris judicial police got on the case in September 2023. They followed the trail thanks to the digital traces left by the two suspects. Unemployed, the latter were arrested and placed in police custody, where They confessed to being guilty of the acts with which they are accused. Released, the two young thugs are summoned to the Paris courthouse on April 3. A source recalls that it is “out of the question for state services to contact offenders by SMS. Requests for payment of fines are always sent by official mail.”
Source: Le Parisien