14 DAY TRIAL // Young people hacking computers and scamming others on the Internet are starting to become more and more numerous. Cyber-crime is a lot easier to commit than real life crime, it's more at hand to fraud people on eBay than to steal money directly from their pockets, that's because fooling people on the Internet is not such a hard thing to do.
20-year-old Phillip Shortman from Cwmbran, south Wales is not new to cyber-crime. Two years ago, he was sentenced to serve 12 months in a youth detention center for having ripped off people on eBay. The total fraud was around ?45.000, as The Register informs. But he just wouldn't stop!
At the beginning of this year he was given an 8-month sentence with suspension for buying thousands of pounds of fuel in stolen fuel cards (payment cards used at filling stations to pay for fuel). And that's not all, he still didn't stop; apparently, he thought they couldn't catch him again. But they did. The 3rd time he had committed an e-crime he got busted again and this time, he has to serve for 2 years. This last time he ran hoax auctions for Ryder Cup tickets, a Sony camcorder and high-tech mobile phones, as seen on The Register. He also obtained various goods through all his scams, out of which a ?250 laptop.
He has only been issued with 2 years, which can be due to the fact that he is a married man and father of two children. Also, his attorney said in his client's defense that he is young, he admitted his wrong-doings and that should be taken into consideration. So this is why he didn't get a much heavier sentence. The judge that sentenced him said that the likes of him are the ones to blame for the fact that e-commerce isn't doing so well and has low credibility, as The Register informs.