Personal Credentials of 60 Million People Targeted

Paul J. Fishman, U.S. Attorney, announced that three men from Maryland, Florida and New Jersey are accused for a wide-ranging computer hacking and identity theft scheme which compromised the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of many people and produced illegal profits worth more than $2 million.

Justice.gov published news on December 15th, 2015, stating that Devin James McArthur aged 27 from Ellicott City, Maryland; Tomasz Chmielarz aged 32 from Rutherford, New Jersey; Timothy Edward Livingston aged 30 from Boca Raton, Florida, are all charged for indictment with conspiracy to perform fraud and related activity associated with computers and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

More than $2 million is produced by these spamming activities. Prosecutors claim that Livingston clients are charged between $5 and $9, if purchase is resulted from a spam email.

U.S. prosecutors alleged that three company's networks are breached by these three men, and also illegally access the fourth company's network, where one of them was working.

As per a news release, their main objective revolved around collecting email addresses of consumers for advertising insurance companies or online sites which sold narcotics without prescriptions. Additionally, few hacked companies email systems are used for sending spam in trying to escape the antispam security filters.

The affected company's names are not mentioned in the indictment, although explained them. One of them is a major company dealing in telecommunication, and the second one is a technology consulting company, both are New York-based. Third company is a Texas-based credit monitoring service; whereas the fourth one is again a telecommunication company of Pennsylvania.

The indictment also observes the forfeiture of $299,653 from various bank accounts, a 2009 Cadillac Escalade SUV and a 2006 Ferrari F430 two-door Spider Convertible.

Fishman, U.S. Attorney, credited special agents in the Cyber Division of FBI, under the supervision of Special Agent in Charge, Richard M. Frankel in Newark, for the investigation which resulted in arrest.

Assistant Attorneys of U.S., Daniel V. Shapiro of the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Section of the Economic Crimes Unit and Peter Gaeta of the Asset Forefeiture-Money Laundering Unit represented the government. The allegations and charges contained in the indictment are only accusations, and the defendants are supposed to be innocent till the time they are proved guilty.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/18/2015