Wahda Bank Issues Urgent Warning After Major Libyan Cyber-Fraud Ring Busted
The Financial Crimes, Anti-Money Laundering, and Counter-Terrorism Financing Agency has dismantled a major cyber-fraud network that targeted citizens by impersonating local Libyan banks, officials announced.
The criminal ring utilised fraudulent social media technical support pages to launch sophisticated phishing attacks against banking clients. Two key suspects have been arrested and referred to the Partial Anti-Corruption Prosecution in Tripoli under heavy guard.
The investigation was launched after the agency’s department received three complaints from victims who lost a combined total of 97,145 Libyan dinars through account breaches and subsequent balance theft.
Specialist tracking teams managed to trace the financial transfers and freeze the accounts that received the stolen funds. Investigations subsequently uncovered a network of middlemen who laundered the stolen cash by purchasing US dollars from the parallel market before transferring them to the ring’s ultimate beneficiaries.
During interrogation, the first suspect confessed to acting as the field operative for a network led by his cousin, admitting he handled approximately $26,000 of the stolen funds in exchange for a commission of just 300 dinars. A second arrested middleman admitted to transferring $8,000 to the network’s beneficiary.
Detectives eventually tracked down the primary suspect, who was found to be managing the fake pages and orchestrating the account breaches. The ringleader already holds a prior record of fraud complaints at other police stations.
In light of the incident and a separate WhatsApp fraud case worth 49,000 dinars, Wahda Bank has issued an urgent cyber-security warning advising customers to remain vigilant against online fraud.
