Man Admits Committing Phishing on AOL Subscribers

A man guilty of sending fraudulent e-mails to users of AOL for four consecutive years under an elaborate phishing scam admitted his offense to federal authorities on August 23, 2007.

Michael Dolan, who earlier belonged to North Miami Beach, Florida, and West Haven, Connecticut, was pleaded guilty in a U.S. District court in Connecticut to have orchestrated an identity fraud and of committing a second fraud of conspiracy involving access devices.

Dolan, who will be sentenced on 14th November 2007, have to fulfill a two-years sentence for charges of identity theft and another sentence of up to five years on account of the conspiracy.

According to court documents and statements during 2002 to 2006, Dolan, with his accomplices, conspired to gather names, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and other financial and personal information by spamming and phishing e-mails targeted at AOL subscribers.

In an online spamming and phishing operation, the scammer sends fraudulent e-mails to people making them disclose their personal information. The current scheme used software to obtain account names of AOL subscribers when they were engaged in chat sessions to later spam them counterfeit e-mails. These e-mails pretended to deliver electronic greeting messages from Hallmark.com.

When an AOL account holder tried to open the fake e-greeting card, he unknowingly downloaded Trojan software that would not let the subscriber access his AOL account without entering his private information.

The federal law agency, with the help of its state and local bodies and Internet service providers, strictly enforce serious investigation and prosecution procedures on criminals who engage in phishing and other identity frauds that upset their victims' lives, said U.S. Attorney O'Connor in a statement. Darkreading.com published it on August 22, 2007.

Following the decision of the judge, Graham Cluley, senior security consultant for Sophos, said that the problem of identity theft was escalating and it had become rather easy to dupe innocent surfers into giving away their confidential information. Informationweek.com published this in news on August 23, 2007.

While serious punishment should await cyber criminals, users need to effectively protect their identification details online, he added.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 9/3/2007