Romanian police have arrested 70 suspected cybercrooks, thought to be members of three gangs which allegedly used compromised eBay accounts to run scams.
The alleged fraudsters obtained login credentials using phishing scams before using these trusted profiles to tout auctions for non-existent luxury goods (luxury cars, Rolex watches and even a recreational aircraft). Buyers handed over the loot but never received any goods in return.
The 800 victims of the scam are estimated to have suffered 800,000 in losses since 2006. Victims were located across Western Europe, Scandinavia, the US, Canada and New Zealand.
Complaints from the victims led to a joint FBI and Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) investigation culminating in the execution of 101 search warrants and multiple arrests across Romania on Tuesday.
A police video of one of the raids can be found here. More on the background to the case can be found on Gary Warner's CyberCrime & Doing Time blog here.
A Romanian police statement on the bust, part of Operation Valley of the Kings, can be found here (in Romanian).
1 comments:
Great post.
Perhaps I can just add to this that the best way to guard against being ripped off by online sales or auctions of any kind, eBay included—and whether seller or buyer—is to use a bona fide online escrow company. Although it does add some cost, that will take uncertainty out of the transaction.
For my money, the best bona fide online escrow (and there seems to be ten fraudulent escrow sites for every bona fide one) is probably Escrow.com (http://escrow.com). In fact, it’s the only one that eBay recommends.
Take care,
Ulf Wolf
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