US Man Held for Purchasing Stolen Identities

IT security and control firm Sophos has appreciated that a man is send to prison for 7 years for purchasing stolen identities from online forums operated by cyber criminals in other countries.

Jacob Vincent Green Bressler was held for inviting information that includes debit and credit account numbers, passwords, expiration dates, PINS and social security numbers.

By using this information, he succeeded in creating counterfeit credit cards which were illegally used to withdraw money from ATMs in Arizona. Half of this stolen money was shared with cyber criminals who provided the original information. The 21 year old made counterfeit credit cards and withdrew almost $1 Million from ATM in Arizona, including one transaction of $148,000 at Casino Del Sol.

Jacob deals with stolen credit and debit card account information of American citizens acquired from many people situated in France, Australia, Egypt, Vietnam, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, UK, Philippines, Estonia, Macedonia, Russia and Canada. He purchased stolen credentials from underground Internet Relay Chat rooms and forums operated by the cyber criminals and also through personal electronic messages with his suppliers. The information that was sold included PIN numbers with infected cards.

The experts at Sophos has examined that the judicial system only caught the cyber criminals who sell identities online and does not pay any attention to the ones who used this information to cheat innocent victims.

Senior technology consultant at Sophos, Graham Cluley, said that no doubt serious action has been taken to create a barrier in the way of the attackers who sell identities online, but much more needs to be done to get rid of these kinds of activities. He added that we should not only just control the suppliers, who sow the seeds of identity theft problem, but also turn the sticks to the cyber criminals who plan to follow the pattern of suppliers. All of them should know that purchasing of this kind of data would not let them free, as per the news published on the website of SOPHOS on August 21, 2007.

Examining the level of the scam, it is noted that Jacob possesses almost 4,500 fake credit and debit account numbers and PINS and more than $300,000 was transferred worldwide.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 9/5/2007