A man is being questioned by the Scorpions in connection with last week's e-mail fraud attack against several local banks.
This comes after members of a Russian phishing syndicate targeted Standard Bank, First National Bank and Nedbank clients. The phishers sent out an e-mail calling on bank clients to update their details.
The box where clients were asked to update their user names and passwords linked to a Russian Web site, which Standard Bank, through its US-based anti-fraud partner, shut down within a few hours of the e-mails being sent.
Standard Bank says intensive investigations by the bank's internal investigators led to a local man being detained for questioning in Johannesburg on Friday.
Herman Singh, director of technology engineering at Standard Bank, says the man was detained and is being questioned with a view to helping police uncover the international syndicate members and shutting down their operation permanently.
Singh agrees with earlier views expressed by anti-fraud companies that the Russian operation is well orchestrated and professional, and therefore South African banks are probably not the only ones to have been targeted by the group.
Singh says the man is allegedly a "runner" recruited to launder money, stolen from customers' accounts, to the fraud syndicate.
"Our fraud detection systems were able to track down the runner in record time before he was able to launder any money to the fraud syndicate."
Singh says it appears the syndicate "runners" are often not aware that what they are doing is illegal.
"These people, who are often unemployed, apply for advertised positions as 'financial managers'. They are told that their bank account will be used to deposit money from various 'clients'. This money is then transferred to the overseas-based syndicate and the runner is paid up to 15% of the proceeds for simply using their bank accounts."
He stresses that although this appears to be very lucrative for the runners, it is illegal and punishable by law. "It is a criminal offence and people will go to prison."
Singh appeals to people who may have been duped into inadvertently using their bank accounts for illegal means to contact their bank as soon as possible. "We will obviously be working very closely with the authorities on this matter. Our objective is to shut down the operation and to frustrate the syndicate behind the scam."
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