Five Californian Phishers Investigated by the FBI

Phishing has made new victims, so the authorities are now struggling to find the ones responsible for the damages which appear to be up to $400,000. Xinhua today reports that 5 Californian men are now investigated by the FBI, because they are suspected for being important parts in large phishing schemes, conducted in the United States. Just like any other phishing attack, the scam was conducted through malicious emails, containing links to fake websites and aiming to steal users' private details. The authorities have what seems to be the biggest advantage in this fight against the phishers: a video recording made by a surveillance camera at some ATMs located in multiple cities.

"The suspects were filmed on surveillance cameras at various ATMs in Los Angeles and Orange counties. They are believed to have acted as mules for a larger organized crime ring by withdrawing money from the stolen brokerage accounts", Xinhua wrote.

It seems like the phishing scheme affected 20 people, but the FBI doesn't know for sure how many damages were caused by the attacks. However, the officials estimated that around $400,000 were stolen from victims' accounts.

"As a result of this scheme, the identities and personal information of at least 20 victims throughout the United States were taken and then used to wire money from various on-line brokerage accounts", the same source added.

The phishing attacks are often targeting users' financial data or at least their login credentials, because the attackers create copies of original websites, publish them on the web and redirect the users to them. Imagine that visiting a fake page, which looks similar to the genuine one, may trick numerous users.

In case you're not one of the users who installed an anti-phishing filter, the only way to notice such a scheme is analyzing the URL address, which is obviously different from the genuine one. However, the latest attacks proved us that a simple DNS can change this aspect completely and give the phishers the possibility to use the main URL in their schemes.