A massive international email scam netted $3 million worth of top-secret US military equipment

[blondebanshee]

A crew of international con artists allegedly convinced a US defense contractor to send them millions of dollars worth of sensitive military gear they weren’t even supposed to know existed, according to court documents obtained by Quartz. Some of the items obtained by the fraudsters are not known to the public and are reportedly so top-secret, “even a photograph [is] considered controlled.”

The “highly sensitive communications interception equipment” was valued at $3.2 million, and requires a license to ship abroad. The manufacturer is named in legal filings only as “Company B,” based in Maryland. Members of the ring posed as a Navy contracting officer named “Daniel Drunz” to acquire the equipment.


[link:https://qz.com/1661537/us-defense-contractor-falls-for-3-million-email-scam/|

[jberryhill]

1. The manufacturer is named in legal filings only as "Company B,"

I hear they have one heck of a bugle player.

[dalton99a]

2. All it took was a free Yahoo email address ending in "navy-mil.us"

All it took for the scammers posing as “Drunz” to get the equipment from Company B was a free Yahoo email address ending in “navy-mil.us,” per a search warrant application filed in Maryland federal court by special agent August Merker of the Department of Homeland Security’s Counter-Proliferation Investigations Task Force. An authentic Navy email would end in “.mil.”

“Drunz” sent a phony purchase order in August 2016 to Company B for the restricted communications interception equipment, and provided a Chantilly, Virginia shipping address that was described as a Navy installation. Company B delivered the devices a month or two later, after which they were shipped to Los Angeles, California.

The purchase order wasn’t real. Company B never got paid, and when investigators interviewed the employees involved, they informed them that “Drunz” didn’t exist either. “Records searches for DRUNZ revealed that there has never been a U.S. Navy employee named Daniel Drunz,” reads one of the case filings.

Needless to say, the shipping address the scammers provided wasn’t an actual Navy installation, but an ordinary office space. A check with the management company showed it had been rented by a person named Janet Sturmer, who was subsequently picked up by law enforcement. Sturmer has been indicted, along with seven others, on a range of federal charges including money laundering, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.