14 DAY TRIAL // Cornel Ionut Tonita, 28, of Galati, Romania, pleaded guilty to charges in connection with a phishing scheme that targeted the customers of numerous financial institutions, the U.S. Department of Justice announces. The phisher is scheduled for sentencing on April 5 and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Cornel Ionut Tonita was indicted in January 2008 in a New Haven Court, along with five other of his nationals, for his role in an international phishing scheme. Authorities finally caught up with him at the sea border crossing in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on July 18, 2008, when he was arrested on an international warrant issued by the Interpol.
The phisher was extradited to the United States to face charges of conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with access devices, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft, in September 2009. Petru Bogdan Belbita, 25, of Craiova, Romania, one of his co-conspirators, who was apprehended earlier that year in Montreal, was also extradited at the time.
The phishing scheme the two were involved in consisted of creating counterfeit websites and sending bogus e-mails to customers of People’s Bank, Citibank, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Comerica Bank, Wells Fargo & Co., eBay, and PayPal, with the purpose of stealing their financial information. Ovidiu-Ionut Nicola-Roman, a third Romanian charged in connection with the operation, is already serving a 50-month prison term and became the first foreign national to be sentenced for phishing in the United States.
According to IDG News Service, Tonita pled guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit fraud related to spam. Prosecutors have evidence of him sending an e-mail with 9,811 e-mail addresses to another co-conspirator with the purpose of spamming them. Sentencing will take place on April 5 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.