Here cyber attackers sought to make a profit out of the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey.
In September 2017 when one third of the county was still submerged due to the effects of the hurricane, the attacker manipulated a county employee into transferring $888,000 into a bank account controlled by the attacker.
Clearly having done their homework the attackers posed as one of the real contractors helping with the hurricane recovery and rebuild. They emailed the county presenting themselves as a fictional employee from the contractor's accounting team requesting the payment. The county transferred the money and the following day discovered the account in fact didn't belong to the contractor and that the employee who made the request didn't exist so the county began making the arrangements to recover the funds through their bank.
The county directed further queries about the event to the FBI office in Los Angeles suggesting that this case is part of "Operation Wire-Wire" (the coordinated international law enforcement operation) which resulted in the arrest in June 2018 of 74 defendants accused of targeting hundreds in business email compromise scams.
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