April 6, 2010 was a bad day for Romania's cybercrooks. In a joint US-Romanian investigation, Romania's Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) sent out over 700 policemen in a nation-wide crack down on eBay fraudsters.
Carrying out 101 search and arrest warrants, investigators brought in over 70 suspects for questioning about online frauds committed using eBay accounts.
The criminals are being accused of setting up or/and illegally acquiring eBay accounts, from which they put on sale nonexistent products. After receiving payment, the criminals would break any contact and move to the next scam.
Some of the products used in their auctions include luxury cars, motorcycles, laptops, watches, jewelry, yachts, electronic components, IT gadgets and even a small recreational aircraft. Since 2006, when the group presumably started its operations, the fraudsters got away with more than € 800,000 in cash.
The 800 victims spread over three continents (Europe, North America and Oceania) filled complaints against the scammers, which prompted the FBI and Secret Service to launch an investigation.
Like other times before, there was no surprise when the clues led them to Eastern Europe, a place well-known for its high rate of cyber crime.
FBI and Secret Service officers at the US Embassy in Bucharest helped the Romanian Police in their investigation, which is expected to produce some serious jail time for the offenders.
Besides the crack down of Romanian-based crocks, ten home searches were also carried out in Prague, the Czech Republic, targeting members of the same group.
A strange fact in this whole story is that one cybercrock used this scamming method for more than three years to pay himself through college at the University of Transylvania in Brasov, of course, studying IT Science.
A video from the DIICOT action can be viewed below.
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