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Online banking fraud at all-time high in Germany

Victims of internet password fraud rose significantly in the last year, with so-called online "phishing" up by 25 percent, the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) reported on Tuesday.

Published: 2 September 2008 16:12 CEST

Online banking fraud at all-time high in Germany

Photo: DPA

Fraudsters skimmed €19 million from internet bank account users in more than 4,100 incidents last year.

“Password theft has reached an unsurpassed high point due to ever-more sophisticated fraud techniques,” said BITKOM chairman Dieter Kempf.

But numbers for 2008 may allow for a trend reversal. “The data for the first part of the year lead us to expect that the number of victims will fall considerably,” he said.

BITKOM reports that fraud methods have gotten more efficient. Internet imposters forgoing typical phishing emails that lead to false bank websites – the organization estimates that now at least three of four crimes stem from Trojan horse programs sent via email. These programs record passwords and secretly forward the information to the hackers.

Another method secretly transfers an online bank user to a false website, BITKOM said.

BITKOM represents more than 1,200 technology, telecommunications and new media companies in Germany.

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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