A group of Romanians operating an ATM company in Mexico and suspected of bribing technicians to install sophisticated Bluetooth-based skimmers in cash machines throughout several top Mexican tourist destinations have enjoyed legal protection from a top anti-corruption official in the Mexican attorney general’s office, according to a new complaint filed with the government’s internal affairs division.

As detailed this week by the Mexican daily Reforma, several Mexican federal, state and municipal officers filed a complaint saying the attorney general office responsible for combating corruption had initiated formal proceedings against them for investigating Romanians living in Mexico who are thought to be part of the ATM skimming operation.

Florian Tudor (right) and his business associates at a press conference earlier this year. Image: Reforma.

Reforma said the complaint centers on Camilo Constantino Rivera, who heads the unit in the Mexican Special Prosecutor’s office responsible for fighting corruption. It alleges Rivera has an inherent conflict of interest because his brother has served as a security escort and lawyer for Floridan Tudor, the reputed boss of a Romanian crime syndicate recently targeted by the FBI for running an ATM skimming and human trafficking network that operates throughout Mexico and the United States.

Tudor, a.k.a. “Rechinu” or “The Shark,” and his ATM company Intacash, were the subject of a three part investigation by KrebsOnSecurity published in September 2015. That series tracked the activities of a crime gang which was rumored to be bribing and otherwise coercing ATM technicians into installing Bluetooth-based skimming devices inside cash machines throughout popular tourist destinations in and around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula — including Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

In 2018, 44-year-old Romanian national Sorinel Constantin Marcu was found shot dead in his car in Mexico. Marcu’s older brother told KrebsOnSecurity shortly after the murder that his brother was Tudor’s personal bodyguard but at some point had a falling out with Tudor and his associates over money. Marcu the elder said his brother was actually killed in front of a new apartment complex being built and paid for by Mr. Tudor, and that the dead man’s body was moved to make it look like he was slain in his car instead.

On March 31, 2019, police in Cancun, Mexico arrested 42-year-old Tudor and 37-year-old Adrian Nicholae Cosmin for the possession of an illegal firearm and cash totaling nearly 500,000 pesos (~USD $26,000) in both American and Mexican denominations. Two months later, a judge authorized the search of several of Tudor’s properties.

The Reforma report says Rivera’s office subsequently initiated proceedings against and removed several agents who investigated the crime ring, alleging those agents abused their authority and conducted illegal searches. The complaint against Rivera charges that the criminal protection racket also included the former chief of police in Cancun.

In September 2019, prosecutors with the Southern District of New York unsealed indictments and announced arrests against 18 people accused of running an ATM skimming and money laundering operation that netted $20 million. The defendants in that case — nearly all of whom are Romanians living in the United States and Mexico — included Florian Claudio Martin, described by Romanian newspapers as “the brother of Rechinu,” a.k.a. Tudor.

The news comes on the heels of a public relations campaign launched by Mr. Tudor, who recently denounced harassment from the news media and law enforcement by taking out a full two-page ad in Novedades, the oldest daily newspaper in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo (where Cancun is located). In a news conference with members of the local press, Tudor also reportedly accused this author of having been hired by his enemies to slander him and ruin his legitimate business.

A two-page ad taken out earlier this year in a local newspaper by Florian Tudor, accusing the head of the state police department of spying on businessmen in order to extort and harass them.

Obviously, there is no truth to Tudor’s accusations, and this would hardly be the first time the reputed head of a transnational crime syndicate has insinuated that I was paid by his enemies to disrupt his operations.

Next week, KrebsOnSecurity will publish highlights from an upcoming lengthy investigation into Tudor and his company by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a consortium of investigative journalists operating in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Central America.

Here’s a small teaser: Earlier this year, I was interviewed on camera by reporters with the OCCRP, who at one point in the discussion handed me a transcript of some text messages shared by law enforcement officials that allegedly occurred between Tudor and his associates directly after the publication of my 2015 investigation into Intacash.

The text messages suggested my story had blown the cover off their entire operation, and that they intended to shut it all down after the series was picked up in the Mexican newspapers. One text exchange seems to indicate the group even briefly contemplated taking out a hit on this author in retribution.

The Mexican attorney general’s office could not be immediately reached for comment. The “contact us” email link on the office’s homepage leads to a blank email address, and a message sent to the one email address listed there as the main contact for the Mexican government portal (gobmx@funcionpublica.gob.mx) bounced back as an attempt to deliver to a non-existent domain name.

Further reading:

Alleged Chief of Romanian ATM Skimming Gang Arrested in Mexico

Tracking a Bluetooth Skimmer Gang in Mexico

Tracking a Bluetooth Skimmer Gang in Mexico, Part II

Who’s Behind Bluetooth Skimming in Mexico?

When a reliable method of scamming money out of people, companies or governments becomes widely known, underground forums and chat networks tend to light up with activity as more fraudsters pile on to claim their share. And that’s exactly what appears to be going on right now as multiple U.S. states struggle to combat a tsunami of phony Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims. Meanwhile, a number of U.S. states are possibly making it easier for crooks by leaking their citizens’ personal data from the very websites the unemployment scammers are using to file bogus claims.

Last week, the U.S. Secret Service warned of “massive fraud” against state unemployment insurance programs, noting that false filings from a well-organized Nigerian crime ring could end up costing the states and federal government hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

Since then, various online crime forums and Telegram chat channels focused on financial fraud have been littered with posts from people selling tutorials on how to siphon unemployment insurance funds from different states.

Denizens of a Telegram chat channel newly rededicated to stealing state unemployment funds discussing cashout methods.

Yes, for roughly $50 worth of bitcoin, you too can quickly jump on the unemployment fraud “wave” and learn how to swindle unemployment insurance money from different states. The channel pictured above and others just like it are selling different “methods” for defrauding the states, complete with instructions on how best to avoid getting your phony request flagged as suspicious.

Although, at the rate people in these channels are “flexing” — bragging about their fraudulent earnings with screenshots of recent multiple unemployment insurance payment deposits being made daily — it appears some states aren’t doing a whole lot of fraud-flagging.

A still shot from a video a fraudster posted to a Telegram channel overrun with people engaged in unemployment insurance fraud shows multiple $800+ payments in one day from Massachusetts’ Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA).

A federal fraud investigator who’s helping to trace the source of these crimes and who spoke with KrebsOnSecurity on condition of anonymity said many states have few controls in place to spot patterns in fraudulent filings, such as multiple payments going to the same bank accounts, or filings made for different people from the same Internet address.

In too many cases, he said, the deposits are going into accounts where the beneficiary name does not match the name on the bank account. Worse still, the source said, many states have dramatically pared back the amount of information required to successfully request an unemployment filing.

“The ones we’re seeing worst hit are the states that aren’t aren’t asking where you worked,” the investigator said. “It used to be they’d have a whole list of questions about your previous employer, and you had to show you were trying to find work. But now because of the pandemic, there’s no such requirement. They’ve eliminated any controls they had at all, and now they’re just shoveling money out the door based on Social Security number, name, and a few other details that aren’t hard to find.”

CANARY IN THE GOLDMINE

Earlier this week, email security firm Agari detailed a fraud operation tied to a seasoned Nigerian cybercrime group it dubbed “Scattered Canary,” which has been busy of late bilking states and the federal government out of economic stimulus and unemployment payments. Agari said this group has been filing hundreds of successful claims, all effectively using the same email address.

“Scattered Canary uses Gmail ‘dot accounts’ to mass-create accounts on each target website,” Agari’s Patrick Peterson wrote. “Because Google ignores periods when interpreting Gmail addresses, Scattered Canary has been able to create dozens of accounts on state unemployment websites and the IRS website dedicated to processing CARES Act payments for non-tax filers (freefilefillableforms.com).”

Image: Agari.

Indeed, the very day the IRS unveiled its site for distributing CARES Act payments last month, KrebsOnSecurity warned that it was very likely to be abused by fraudsters to intercept stimulus payments from U.S. citizens, mainly because the only information required to submit a claim was name, date of birth, address and Social Security number.

Agari notes that since April 29, Scattered Canary has filed at least 174 fraudulent claims for unemployment with the state of Washington.

“Based on communications sent to Scattered Canary, these claims were eligible to receive up to $790 a week for a total of $20,540 over a maximum of 26 weeks,” Peterson wrote. “Additionally, the CARES Act includes $600 in Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation each week through July 31. This adds up to a maximum potential loss as a result of these fraudulent claims of $4.7 million.”

STATE WEB SITE WOES

A number of states have suffered security issues with the PUA websites that exposed personal details of citizens filing unemployment insurance claims. Perhaps the most galling example comes from Arkansas, whose site exposed the SSNs, bank account and routing numbers for some 30,000 applicants.

In that instance, The Arkansas Times alerted the state after hearing from a computer programmer who was filing for unemployment on the site and found he could see other applicants’ data simply by changing the site’s URL slightly. State officials reportedly ignored the programmer’s repeated attempts to get them to fix the issue, and when it was covered by the newspaper the state governor accused the person who found it of breaking the law.

Over the past week, several other states have discovered similar issues with their PUA application sites, including Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio.