14 DAY TRIAL // A 24-year-old man from Connecticut was convicted to seven years in prison for scamming AOL subscribers, which resulted in damages in excess of $400,000. Over 250 people are reported to have lost important amounts of money because of several phishing attacks coordinated by Dolan. The seven-year penalty was the maximum that he could have gotten for "one count of conspiracy to commit fraud with access device and one count of aggravated identity theft," which were the charges the United States Attorney's Office District of Connecticut brought against him.
Together with his associates, who are also scheduled for sentencing in the following days, Dolan pulled a scam on hundreds of AOL subscribers, using a method that is commonly known as phishing. Between 2002 and 2006, the man sent thousands of greeting cards, most of them claiming to be from Hallmark, which actually installed trojans. The malicious software then modified the registers of users' AOL accounts, which, in turn, did not allow them access to their page without first introducing information that offered the scammers control over their bank accounts.
By using this method, the cyber criminal ring led by Dolan learned names, credit card and bank account numbers, along with Social Security numbers. They used all this information to make counterfeit credit cards to be later used to withdraw the victims' money from ATMs or to buy different items from retail outlets.
In 2007, the man pleaded guilty to all accusations. Yesterday, according to PC World, citing an IDG news report, he received his sentence, of 7 years in prison. This is not the first time that Dolan is sentenced to imprisonment because of Internet frauds. In 2004, he got two years on probation for "accessing a protected computer without authorization." In 2006, as the hijacker failed to meet the terms of his probation, he was imprisoned for nine months.