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“It was an invitation for scammers”
The | Reading time: 3 minutes.
Many restaurateurs have to wait for the promised money
The most extensive federal government rescue package in the country’s history should also help restorers survive the crown crisis. But even with those who have already received the money, it may not be enough.
To some politicians in the Bundestag, it is not surprising that criminals have attempted to use federal states’ online portals to pay for crown aid. A member of parliament wonders why a proven system of tax offices has not been used.
Men Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, all requests for Corona emergency aid should be sent by mail. That seems “somewhat dated,” admitted Economy Minister Harry Glawe (CDU). But “it currently helps protect against digital fraud.” And fear of this is likely to spread in other federal states.
Because in North Rhine-Westphalia, closely networked scammers apparently took advantage of the difficulties of small self-employed workers and tried to divert necessary aid funds to their own accounts. The criminals replicated the deceptively real state-created app website, and thus incited small business owners to store their data on the fake pages.
They were then copied by the criminals and entered into the real side of the country, but with new account numbers, which they had obtained in Darknet against the payment of a “profit share”. Due to these machinations, the state government temporarily stopped granting and paying aid on Thursday to improve the digital security architecture.
The website with the emergency NRW help request in the original (above) and the fake page that has since been turned off (below)
Source: dpa
This attempt to defraud the green national politician Konstantin von Notz is not surprising. “Security authorities have repeatedly pointed out the risk that criminals may take advantage of the current crisis situation,” said the vice president of the parliamentary group in the Bundestag WELT. An expansion to other federal states should be feared.
If only because “the phishing sites required for data theft are very easy to copy and are tailored to the respective requirements of the individual federal states,” said von Notz. Now the Federal Criminal Police Office has to support state criminal investigation offices in the investigation and prosecution.
Criminals should not be allowed “to misuse the crisis situation for their perfidious machinations,” nor should they be allowed to avoid further fraud, “payments that are extremely important to the survival of many companies are suspended for a long time.”
Bundestag member Christian Jung also refuses to stop. “Aid is urgently needed and must continue to be paid,” Jung said. This is also justifiable because many applicants have become aware of the danger and are therefore “checking more closely” “where they store their data and account numbers.”
At the same time, these processes show Jung that “state digital offerings are insufficient.” In theory, it would have been technically possible “to discover unusual account numbers by programming the state systems accordingly and to examine the corresponding applications more closely.”
For AfD economic politician Steffen Kotré, the fraud shows that “crisis management by the federal government and states” in the crown pandemic “should have started earlier.” Then, according to the Bundestag member, there would have been enough time, in coordination with the federal government, to introduce secure standards to verify the plausibility and authenticity of the applications.
It now makes sense that particularly affected countries “adopt the verification criteria of the countries with the least fraud.” Effective measures could be the obligation to submit sales and cost statements by the applicants or a brief and free statement of responsibility by the internal bank. Kotré also thinks it is wrong to stop aid.
Former AfD politician and now unaffiliated member of the Bundestag, Uwe Kamann, told WELT that “a good idea had been poorly implemented when aid was paid without bureaucracy.” Setting up their own websites for the app was “an invitation for scammers.” Instead, “one could have used safe and proven methods like the Elster system for income tax.”
In any case, all the data of the current applicants is stored there with their real account numbers and can be verified without any problem. In order to use this system of tax offices for Corona’s aid, Kamann said that “the countries’ ministers of economy and finance had to cooperate.”
