FBI points to VoIP as element in online financial scheme

The Federal Burea of Investigation has pointed to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as an eabling tool that has allowed perpetrators to steal money from unsuspecting victims' online accounts. Citing one case in particular, that of a Florida dentist who lost about $400,000 to thieves, the FBI explained the role that VoIP played in the scheme.

"The scheme is known as telephony denial-of-service (TDOS) and according to several telecommunications companies working with the FBI, there has been a recent surge in these attacks in the past few weeks," the FBI said in a statement earlier this month. "The perpetrators are suspected of using automated dialing programs and multiple accounts to overwhelm the land and cell phone lines of their victims with thousands of calls.

"The FBI has determined that these calls serve as a diversionary technique. During these TDOS attacks, online trading and other money management accounts are being accessed by the perpetrators who are transferring funds out of those accounts ... The purpose of the malicious phone calls is to occupy the victim phone numbers on record with the financial institutions managing the accounts so that when the institutions contact the vicim to verify the changes and transactions, the institution is unable to reach the victim. Consequently, the victim has no idea what has really transpired until it's too late."

In the case of the Florida dentist, law enforcement officials uncovered VoIP accounts created by a single user that paired the accounts with automatic dialing tools to dial a large volume of computer-generated calls per minute, all directed toward the business, home and mobile telephone numbers of the dentist.

The VoIP accounts used in the scheme were terminated but the perpetrators were not identified. As the supplier of the VoIP lines, AT&T got the FBI's Cybercrime resources involved.

While that incident in Florida began last November, AT&T's associate director of global fraud management Adam Panaiga said he's more recently seen an increase in the same type of activity targeting potential victims across the country.

Robert Moore, chief information officer at business communications firm PAETEC commented, "With the advent of Voice over IP and the newest technologies in phone service, criminal attacks on businesses using those platforms have become increasingly sophisticated."

Read the full statement the FBI issued on May 11.