Phantom truck sale to Libya sees cash vanish from bank account
Cybercrime might still be quite rare in Australia but its effects are being felt here, it emerges at a legal seminar.
Experienced transport and logistics lawyer and Colin Biggers & Paisley partner Stuart Hetherington related a case he has taken on relating to fraud related to the purported sale of second-hand trucks to a Libyan client.
The client “though he was dealing with a Sydney-based genuine second hand truck dealer, who used the name of an Australian [freight] forwarder to produce a fake bill of lading, to whom he sent $10,000 to a Westpac bank account and never saw the funds again”, Hetherington says.
“All I’ve been able to ascertain from the New South Wales Police on his behalf is that the bank account to which the amount was paid was that of a missing person.”
Hetherington indicates that there was little keenness from state police to tackle the crime.
He links the incident with a sophisticated hacking operation involving young IT experts and criminals from Turkey and South America who gained control of drug shipments through the Port of Antwerp in Belgium at the start of this decade and reports of port-related criminal activity in Australia.
The Antwerp case involved both the email of malicious software and burglary to fit key-logging devices on staff terminals.
The lesson is that, with the likelihood of transport and logistics hacking being more ‘when’ than ‘if’, eternal vigilance and suspicion was the order of the day now.