wired.comBank thieves have rolled out a new weapon in their arsenal of tactics — telephony denial-of-service attacks that flood a victim’s phone with diversionary calls while the thieves drain the victim’s account of money.
A Florida dentist lost $400,000 from his retirement account last year in this manner, and the FBI said the attacks are growing.
A spokeswoman for the Communication Fraud Control Association — a telecom industry organization — told Threat Level that although fraudulent transfers have been halted in a number of cases, the losses are increasing.
“I know it’s in the millions,” said Roberta Aranoff, executive director of the CFCA. “It has exceeded a million dollars easily.”
Last November, Robert Thousand Jr., a semi-retired dentist in Florida, received a flood of calls to several phones. When he answered them, he heard a 30-second recording for a sex hotline, according to the St. Augustine Record.
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