14 DAY TRIAL // Ten people of different nationalities have been arrested in Germany on accusations of Internet fraud. The scam had not been limited to Germany, but was at a world wide scale and it is presumed that its victims had lost hundreds of thousands of euros.
The culprits were Russians, Ukrainians and Germans and they were residing in different cities. That's the thing about Internet, you don't need to be in the same place with your accomplices to form a gang and scam people. The Web is like one huge country, and you can go from one border to the other in just seconds, depending on your data transfer.
The 10 suspects are believed to have targeted people with phishing attacks via e-mail borne Trojans. I guess that if you're a fan of security news, you know how these attacks work. The aggressor sends an e-mail containing a link. Once the receiver visits that link, he gets infected?unless he has an AV. Then, after the Trojan enters the unprotected machine, it simply keeps a log of data that the hacker can access. With the stolen data, he can do a lot of nasty stuff, in this case, fraud people.
"This case shows that criminal organizations are using the Internet more and more to gain enormous amounts of money with a supposedly low risk of being caught," stated Crime Office President Joerg Ziercke, as according to Reuters. He continued saying: "The authorities face constant new challenges in the fight against computer crime where perpetrators are developing a higher degree of professionalism and specialization."
The people that have been arrested were 'living the good life'. I'm not saying that everyone out there who's filthy rich is necessarily involved in some illegal activity, but when you're into cyber-fraud, there's no possible way for you to be poor. So, their riches might also indicate their guilt.