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The main suspect, a 35-year-old Nigerian who has lived in Austria since 2015, and his 30-year-old wife from Austria have already been convicted. Another suspected accomplice, a 26-year-old Hungarian, has since been arrested in Greece.
The accused couple is said to have initially gained access to the local data networks and e-mail systems of companies and institutions and thus unnoticed intercepted their e-mail traffic with their contractual partners. The main focus was on invoices and payment agreements. On the one hand, the terms of payment were changed in the documents sent in the email attachment and, on the other hand, email addresses of the contracting parties that sounded almost identical were created in order to feign a deceptively real email conversation on both sides. As a result, incoming amounts landed directly on the accounts set up by the scammers. The 35-year-old had previously set up an international network of accounts for this purpose. The affected companies usually only noticed the fraud when they contacted each other by telephone because the agreed payments were not made.
The investigations of the State Criminal Police Office began in 2018. During a house search, a large amount of evidence such as several data carriers was secured from the head of the gang. The 35-year-old has now received an unconditional four-year prison sentence, his wife 18 months.
Source: Nachrichten
