US District Court Found Sergiu Daniel Popa Guilty of Running Phishing Campaign

Sergiu Daniel Popa, a 23 years old phisher, would have to spend eight and a half years in prison after he was found guilty of involving in a series of phishing scams by the US District Court in Minneapolis. The scams had affected nearly 7,000 victims and amassed around $700,000 in illicit income, as reported by The Register on May 28, 2009.

It has also been found that Popa sent e-mail messages representing genuine financial institution such as PayPal, SunTrust and Citibank to attract victims to visit fake web pages. Popa utilized these pages to harness critical information of users such as names, PIN codes, addresses, credit card, bank account numbers and social security information.

Popa is a professional hacker as he carefully planned and executed the phishing scam. He made sure to provide legitimate and authentic look to the scam to attract more and more people besides employing more professional scamming techniques.

Besides, Popa was engaged in the selling of "a phishing/spamming toolkit" for $1,500 along with its operational instructions. Security experts also highlighted that cyber criminals used to make massive gains by selling spamming and phishing kits till few years back and many phishers preferred ready-made phishing kits over acquiring technical skills of phishing.

Authorities investigating the case of Popa have found a file in his Yahoo account which contained credit card details and identification of over 5,800 victims. Out of these, 96 belonged to Minnesota and 34 belonged to Hennepin County, one of the counties in Minnesota (US).

According to the reports given by some local media agencies, Popa begun his phishing activities in June 2000 that carried on for nearly seven years and made him one of the youngest phishers (14-year old).

The sentence was announced by Judge Johan Tunheim who said that such a long imprisonment reflected the scale of crime committed by Popa, as reported by startribune on May 27, 2009. Tunheim further added that considering the number of people badly affected by the scam, the punishment seemed appropriate to protect the public.

The punishment would be a lesson as well as a deterrent for those who still involves in cyber crime.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 6/1/2009