Big Phishing Kingpin Didn't Actually Make Any Money

from the forgot-the-second-part dept

Mon, May 22nd 2006 3:19pm — Mike Masnick

Earlier this year, we wrote about Microsoft helping to take down a small fry phisher in Iowa, noting that for all the hype it was getting it looked like one random kid playing around with a phishing scam. Considering that most phishing scams appear to be run offshore by organized crime groups, it didn't seem that noteworthy that Microsoft had tracked down one kid setting up a fake MSN page and spamming people. zanek writes in to point to a story he wrote with some more details about the case, including the fact that the kid never actually made any money out of the scam. He got a bunch of people to hand over the information, but it looks like he never actually did anything once he had that info. So, the $57,294.07 fine that he received wasn't for the money stolen, but simply to pay for the investigation into the crime. Yet, at the time, it was made out to be a "sophisticated" phishing scam that required nearly a year of detailed investigation from Microsoft to crack.

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Joe Smith, 22 May 2006 @ 4:07pm

Phishing bait
This whole phishing thing mystifies me. I get half a dozen phishing emails a week (along with a dozen Nigerian fraud letters). It just cannot be that hard for the authorities to track these frauds back to the perpetrators. Hell - fill out one of the forms with the details of a honey pot account and wait for someone to access it and then trace the access and the money.
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Mekka Lekka Hi Mekka Hi Mekka Hiny ho, 22 May 2006 @ 4:52pm

Re: Phishing bait
Computer crimes aren't illegal in many of the countries they do them from. And those where it is, the organized criminals can pay better than the local police department. Specifically, they pay the police better than the local department. So they can be hard to find and hard to punish.
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offshoreman, 22 May 2006 @ 4:57pm

Harder than you think
Joe, these scams can be difficult to immpossible to bust. Money in a US account opened with fake documents (which takes about 20 minutes to do) gets wired to a bank in Latvia into an account owned by fake documents and is subsequently wired to another bank in a private jurisdiction, such as Anguilla or Jersey. By the time authorities prove there was a crime committed the scam has run its course. In many jurisdiction you have to prove there is substantial likelyhood of a crime in order to get private documents. george Bush does not rule the world - contrary to the belief of some.
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charlie potatoes, 22 May 2006 @ 8:36pm

phishing schemes
Years ago when airplane hijackings were beginning and there were as yet no air marshals, George Carlin said he intended to carry a gun onto his next flight. For what were the odds that there would be two guys on the same airplane with a gun?
I say we should all begin to phish.. every e mail account should come with instructions on how to do it. Then what would the odds be that some sucker would happen to answer a criminal's e mail instead of someone altruistic? I say let's flood the market. These criminals ain't from around here anyway... so FUCK YOU, TOWEL HEAD
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Anonymous Coward, 22 May 2006 @ 9:29pm

Re: phishing schemes
You are a Fucking Moron!!!!!!!!!
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Andyware, 22 May 2006 @ 10:43pm

I think the email clients should have already taken care of this problem, pathetic...
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J, 22 May 2006 @ 10:44pm

Re: Re: phishing schemes
Don't just call him a Fucking Moron. Tell him why he's a fucking moron. I'm not an expert on the subject of phishing, so I don't know exactly where they are fishing from. I do know that the 419 scams are run out of Africa. I will therefore assume that a lot of the phishing scams are also run out of Africa. Unfortunately the term towel head refers to a middle eastern person or an indian. Africans are not middle eastern or indian. perhaps this is the wrong part of the post to correct but It was my favorite.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2006 @ 12:55am

Re: Re: Re: phishing schemes
Don't feed the troll.
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N.D, 3 Nov 2006 @ 7:30pm

LOL!
Joe, these scams can be difficult to immpossible to bust. Money in a US account opened with fake documents (which takes about 20 minutes to do) gets wired to a bank in Latvia into an account owned by fake documents and is subsequently wired to another bank in a private jurisdiction, such as Anguilla or Jersey. By the time authorities prove there was a crime committed the scam has run its course. In many jurisdiction you have to prove there is substantial likelyhood of a crime in order to get private documents. george Bush does not rule the world - contrary to the belief of some.

Well i'll tell you something else, 80% of the Nigerian phishing/scams are NOT made by any Nigerian citizen, all are made only to use their name and social position... that's all, if tomorow appears another e-mail scam, saying that an NewYork rich person died and his son wants to take his money but he needs your help, that doesn't mean it really is like he says so. I've been in contact with such "scammers" or "phishers" by responding to their e-mails and guess what, some even sent me their ID printed photo's, and none of them were Nigerians or Africans or w/e you name it, so stop mixing things if you don't really know anything about it, to spread rummors or false leads or "personal theory's" is easy but that doesn't mean they are also true.
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