Internet Changes Everything

103 arrests for Internet fraud, related crimes since June: US

103 arrests for Internet fraud, related crimes since June: US

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US authorities arrested at least 103 suspects and filed 117 criminal complaints since June 1 in a crackdown on various forms of online fraud, Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

Ashcroft said the effort dubbed Operation Web Snare "is the largest and most successful collaborative law-enforcement operation ever conducted to prosecute online fraud, stop identity theft, and prevent other computer-related crimes."

The law enforcement effort targeted schemes including hacking, selling counterfeit software and "phishing," a technique directing Internet users to fake sites to steal personal or financial data.

Ashcroft said authorities investigated more than 160 cases involving some 150,000 victims and losses of at least 215 million dollars.

"Last year alone, nearly 10 million Americans had their identities stolen," he said. "Identity theft costs the nation's businesses nearly 50 billion dollars a year in fraudulent transactions and often involves coordinated criminal conduct."

In one case, the chief executive of a California communications company and five other individuals were charged for allegedly using "denial of service" attacks against their online competitors, Ashcroft said.

In another case, a Ukrainian national was extradited from Cyprus to charges of credit-card trafficking and wire fraud after obtaining from Internet chat rooms numbers illegally obtained from sources around the world.

Ashcroft said US and Nigerian authorities were also cooperating on the so-called Nigerian e-mail fraud scheme, in which messages pledge to provide large sums of money for an advance "fee."

August 27, 2004 at 07:22 AM in Online crime | Permalink | TrackBack (15) | Top of page | Blog Home