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Law360 (March 29, 2021, 8:44 PM EDT) -- U.S. authorities have seized seven websites that masqueraded as places where people could learn information about COVID-19 vaccines, warning that fraudsters are exploiting interest in the injections to lure victims into divulging personal data.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia announced Friday that the government has shut down four websites — including "pfizer-vaccines.com" and "pfizermx.com" — that pretended to be associated with vaccine maker Pfizer Inc., using the registered trademarks of the pharmaceutical giant and its manufacturing partner BioNTech in attempts to convince visitors that the sites were legitimate.
The government also seized three websites claiming to be associated with pandemic aid efforts from the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, commonly known as UNICEF, including "unicefcovid19relief.com," federal authorities said in the announcement. Visitors to the sites on Monday were greeted with a banner stating that they had been taken over by investigators at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, whose Cyber Crimes Unit has been probing the use of malicious pandemic-related domains.
Scammers used the fraudulent websites from last December up until this February to take advantage of people hoping to learn more about COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and pandemic-related employment opportunities, authorities said. The website "pfizer-vaccines.com," for example, appeared to be an online platform for obtaining information about the vaccine, but in fact steered visitors to email addresses and phone numbers controlled by fraudsters, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Another site, "pfizersotckrate.com," was designed to look like a place where investors could trade stock options for Pfizer, before urging visitors to divulge their bank account information to scammers, authorities said. Investigators were tipped off to the websites "after learning of their use in fraud schemes through notifications from the affected entities," some of which had received phishing emails urging them to visit the sites, the DOJ said.
"The online fraud and phishing schemes that were embedded within these seven sham websites sought to capitalize on the misfortunes of others during the global pandemic," Raj Parekh, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.
The website seizures come as cybercriminals have exploited the pandemic to launch cyberattacks at unprecedented levels over the past year, industry experts say, including by pretending to be trusted associates while hiding malicious software in phishing messages or trying to intercept wire transfers.
Last year, Microsoft filed a civil lawsuit in an attempt to prevent alleged cybercriminals from stealing its users' personal information through what the company called a "COVID-19 themed" phishing campaign, while the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network warned its members that fraudsters have posed as officials from authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization in pandemic-related criminal schemes.
--Additional reporting by Emma Whitford. Editing by Daniel King.
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