14 DAY TRIAL // A 22-year old UK cyber thief who stole money from people's PayPal accounts to buy luxury items and gold bullion was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison this week.
Richard Kirk, 22, of Sherwood, Nottingham, was accused of fraud and theft after breaking into 303 PayPal accounts and stealing a total of £180,000.
Police launched an investigation after one of the victims noticed the fraudulent activity and filed a complaint.
This is Nottingham reports that Kirk was arrested in his mother's house, right after receiving two gold bars bought with the money he stole. According to authorities, he also used the illegaly obtained funds to buy expensive goods.
The cyber thief pleaded guilty to five charges of fraud, four of theft and one related to the use of a computer in carrying out the crime.
Prosecutor Martin Hurst described Kirk as a professional eBay and PayPal hacker. "What this man has been doing is attacking other peoples' accounts and stealing their money on a daily basis," he said.
When delivering the three-and-a-half-year jail sentence Judge Ebrahim Mooncey told the fraudster: "A lot of effort was put in by you over a long period of time in order to conduct the fraud you did."
Ebay and its subsidiary PayPal are the two most phished brands on the Internet. According to January statistics from German antivirus vendor Avira, PayPal was targeted in almost 37% of all phishing attacks detected last month, while eBay in 27%.
People are strongly advised to exercise extra caution when receiving emails claiming to be from any of these two companies and to check the address bar before inputting their credentials in any page that claims to be related to them. In both cases, the login pages should be protected by a valid SSL certificate.