14 DAY TRIAL // Three individuals – one Nigerian national and two Romanians – have been sentenced to a total of 21 years in prison by a London Crown Court. The fraudsters were found guilty of running a massive phishing scheme that could have caused losses of up to £59 million (€69 million / $92 million) in the UK alone.
Detectives of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) started monitoring the suspects after learning that they were responsible for over 2,600 phishing pages placed on the Internet, Crime&Justice reports.
The phishing sites mimicked the websites of various financial institutions, being designed to target users from the US, the UK, Russia, China, Canada and Australia.
Investigations revealed that the crooks possessed 70 million email addresses, which they bombarded with phishing emails. Investigators found that at least 12,500 users from the UK fell for the scams and handed over their financial details.
PCeU representatives, assisted by law enforcement authorities from Romania, searched several addresses in Constanta, Romania, and seized documents showing the group’s money laundering activities.
The crooks were arrested at a luxury hotel. They were caught red-handed while trying to retrieve stolen banking data from their servers.
“These convictions have struck a major and decisive blow against this global cyber crime gang. Quite what they have managed to steal is yet to be determined but their conviction has prevented them from systematically defrauding thousands more bank customers across the world,” noted Investigating Officer DI Jason Tunn, of the MPS PCeU.
“This is by far the biggest case the PCeU has dealt with to date and is likely to be the biggest cyber phishing case so far in the UK,” he added.
“My personal thanks go to the UK banking industry, the United States Secret Service, Municipal Police of Lille, and the Romanian Police Cyber Division for their invaluable and ongoing cooperation which has enabled these convictions to be secured.”