Wed 3 Jun 2009
A Romanian immigrant in Minnesota has been sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison for a phishing scam. Sergiu D. Popa, 23, created fake Web sites, and then lured victims to the sites with fraudulent emails. His 7,000 victims lost about $700,000.
He offered to sell the stolen information, and even marketed a phishing toolkit with step-by-step instructions for $1,500. Popa had already served 71 days in jail in 2006, for hijacking an eBay account. In that case, he tricked a consumer into sending him $1,448 for a non-existent product. What a guy. The Government is trying to deport him.
Phishing scams and other attacks regularly pop up on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and are too numerous to mention. Be cautious and alert on such sites, and think before you click!
June 14th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Phishing has now getting shape of an organized industry with different criminals operating at different levels. This is creating problems to nail them.