FBI Busts Up Worldwide Phishing Ring
The FBI has busted up a major spam and bank fraud ring that spanned from coast to coast, and even had ties to Egypt. Fifty-three suspects in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Charlotte, North Carolina have been indicted, with dozens of them already in police custody. An additional 47 Egyptian suspects have been named, and authorities there are working to apprehend them now. The scam centered around phishing spam e-mails, in which the crooks posed as representatives from a bank and asked the victims to update their personal information by following a link. If targets followed the link, they were taken to a bogus banking site that harvested their personal and banking account information. The 100 criminals, working in concert, immediately withdrew money from their victims' accounts, transferring their spoils to fraudulent accounts.
Federal officials told the New York Times that this was the largest identity theft indictment ever, in terms of number of defendants. Those arrested in the U.S. have all been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, which can carry a maximum of 20 years in prison. Some faced additional charges. The supposed ring leader Kenneth Lucas, for instance, is being charged with bank fraud and money laundering.
It's a small victory, since the 100 suspects will likely just be replaced by 100 more dirt-bags who lack any moral compass, but it still feels good to know that authorities are actively investigating and arresting these crooks. [From: New York Times]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Susannahjo said 12:01PM on 10-11-2009
YES! I get those emails all the time... saying it's Bank of America and they want to update my information. I don't even bank with Bank of America. I always send them to the bank's security team, but the notion that someone is trying to rip me off just infuriates me. And then I think of my Mom, or people who are in financial hardship, and I imagine them not being on guard and making that 2-minute mistake... and boom, all their savings just gone in a whisper. It makes me sad to live in a world with so many Bernie Madoffs and where people just don't give a sh&t about each other. Thank God some of those guys are being put away... at least for a little while. If I knew who they were, I'd go to the prison and kick them in the balls.
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gregorycreaser said 6:54PM on 10-12-2009
My wife called me to ask if I had purchased a GE Appliance -- she rec'd an email that basically thanked her for "looking into" GE and subscribing to their newsletter. Great- another nice wake up call, as she spent a couple hours checking cc purchase history.
I work in the industry (thawte rep) and we generally use sites that employ the highest level of security through Extended Validation SSL. Denoted by a bright green url bar and is currently one of the only ways to combat the phishing scams, and completely protect your privacy.
We are diligent about not duplicating sign on information between sites and also frequently change them on a regular basis.
If an eavesdropper sniffs out your login to “unsecured sites” it’s possible they will use that information to gain access to other sites using that same log in.
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