Former Technician at Motorola Scammed Employees at the Firm via Wire Fraud; Here's How he Did it

Motorolla is one of the oldest mobile phone brands around, but even the electronic giant itself isn't immune to cyber attacks. A former Motorola employee in the US has confessed to fraudulently obtaining a passport while awaiting trial for a cyberattack on his former employer. 

Andrew Mahn pled guilty in federal court on Tuesday to both passport fraud as well as wire fraud. In February, Andrew Mahn was put to trial by a grand jury for passport fraud, after being charged in 2021 with breaking into Motorola's computer network and stealing data. However, Motorola did not name Mahn in their indictment.

How did Andre Mahn scam Motorola employees?

Mahn previously worked as a radio technician for a telecommunication company that was based in Chicago and he sent spear-phishing emails to several employees at his former employer, to trick them into signing up for a fake website. Mahn also sent them text messages and deceived them into even entering their two-factor authentication digits. This would finally get him access to the telecommunication server of the company. 

While using an account tied to his Massport work email address, he accessed Company A's public website using this Comcast IP address on 13 separate occasions. After this, a second IP address was used to access Mahn's personal Venmo and Gmail accounts.

Later, when he was on release pending trial for doing what he did, he applied for a passport under a false name in Atkinson, New Hampshire. He even gave them false documents that included a falsely generated birth certificate and even a state identification card.

The conviction

The charges for the wire fraud provide for a sentence of a maximum of 20 years in prison and 3 years of supervised release. Apart from this, there may also be a fine of f $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss, and restitution. He now awaits sentencing which is scheduled to take place in March as mentioned.

How can you protect yourself from wire fraud?

Before getting to the measures one can take to safeguard themselves let's look at what is wire fraud. It's essentially any form of financial fraud that can be committed with the use of any electronic device. Those who are scamming people with the help of the internet, phone calls, text messages, or any social media platform, are committing wire fraud.

It's common that scammers are well prepared and know certain information to be able to fool you. Therefore it's important to verify each call and each email before actually replying to it. 

Encryption is extremely important when you are trying to safeguard any confidential text from any outsiders and third parties and therefore it's important to try and see if your emails are encrypted. 

It's a good idea to always keep reading about all the new kinds of scams that are becoming more and more prevalent.