Cybercriminals' BEC Schemes Exploit Athletes in Soccer’s Golden Era

For Cybercriminals and Lamine Yamal, it's a “Golden Generation” — for Pulisic and US Soccer, it's not so Golden.

Armand here, RPost’s armadillo product evangelist. I was considering getting back to my main passion of talking “tech” (with an RPost spin of course 😉) but couldn’t help thinking about sports and gold. Olympic Gold for Spain in soccer (or, as the Spaniards call it, fútbol). The supposed “Golden Generation” for US Soccer. And of course, back to cybercrime, today’s Gold Rush for cybercriminals via a hydra-type scheme with many heads the FBI calls Business Email Compromise. (The FBI, by the way, publicized in their IC3 report that more than 150,000 folks in the US have directly (mis)sent $20 billion to cybercriminals due to this scheme — it certainly has been a Golden Generation for these innovative tricksters.)

Let’s start with the supposed “Golden Generation” for US Soccer. We’re now in the international soccer break — the time to watch top players playing for their respective countries.

For US Soccer, they have had possibly the most underwhelming and most worrisome international break amongst any nation in the world. They started their international duty with a friendly against Canada, one of their biggest rivals, losing the match 2-1. They looked very sluggish and disconnected as a team, with key players not performing anywhere near expectations. They later went on to play New Zealand, and this game ended up being closer than expected, with the US only taking the lead in the 69th minute with a goal by, yes, you guessed it, Captain Christian Pulisic. The US were cruising the whole game, and it looked to be a win for them until the 89th minute, when New Zealand scored on an awful mistake from the US team. The game ended 1-1. It was a horrid scene for not only the team but also for the nation. It seems the USA’s “Golden Generation” just keeps on underperforming in soccer while overperforming for cybercriminals!

I’ll explain this “Business Email Compromise” (“BEC”) golden opportunity making cybercriminals rich in the context of a star US soccer player. The way a BEC scheme often works is that a cybercriminal compromises an email account of, for example, a player. The criminal uses this email access to see information related to contracts that describe money that the athlete is supposed to receive, and then, posing as the athlete, the cybercriminal sends a short note to contracting parties (manager, sponsor, other) asking them to send the money per the agreement to the athlete at his or her “new” (aka the cybercriminal’s) bank account. The cybercriminal may even create a GenAI clone or deep fake of the athlete to chat on a call or web meeting to confirm the new bank digits. The athlete has no idea this is even going on. Funds supposed to be sent to the athlete are inadvertently redirected to the cybercriminal account. Boom! A loss for the athlete, one worse than Christian Pulisic losing to Canada 2-1 (at least in the hypothetical mind of Pulisic). Gold for the cybercriminal poser.

The Spanish love gold. They win gold like in this year’s Paris Olympics, and they’ve lost gold, not only when their Spanish Armadas would sink crossing the Atlantic laden with gold from the Americas hundreds of years ago, but also now, through these business email compromise tactics often powered up by GenAI.

Spain’s recent summer success with the Euros and Olympics has brought them into this golden spotlight. Spain played Serbia and Switzerland in this round of international games, which yielded a surprise result. First off, they had a scoreless draw vs. Serbia despite dominating the game. The Spanish team refreshed and showed the world what they can do by punishing Switzerland 4-1 —and, by the way, there was pure dominance from the start, with their first goal coming in only the fourth minute.

Now, I have to say the standout player for Spain (and, in my opinion, the world) is probably the new golden boy of sports (you cybercriminals, stay away from this gold!). Golden boy is a seventeen-year-old named Lamine Yamal; he is on top of the world. While he has been “lights out” for Spain and Barcelona the past couple months, it is stunningly incredible that he is able to perform at a world-class level at such a young age. Living up to his golden reputation, he bagged an assist on the first goal of the game against Switzerland on top of his multiple goals and assists playing for the soccer powerhouse club, Barcelona. 

So, the good news? The Spanish are golden in soccer (aka fútbol) these days, and it's the type of gold the cybercriminals cannot likely steal.

The bad news is for the USA. They seem to be dominating in giving up gold —not medals, but money. Not only are the soccer gods stealing the umpf of the “Golden Generation” from young soccer athletes and their fans, but also, cybercriminals have stolen $20 billion from 150,000 athletes, fans, mothers, fathers, business people, and others using this described BEC email impostor trickery.

My humble armadillo recommendation? Whether you are an athlete, fan, or mere mortal regular or business person, you need RPost’s PRE-Crime tech toolkit that runs in Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and more to help you identify these cybercriminals in action and pre-empt the steal.

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