Global Phishing Ring Bites The Dust

Law enforcement agencies arrested 33 people in California, Nevada and North Carolina earlier in October as part of an international crackdown on phishing. The raid, called ‘Operation Phish Phry’ by the FBI, was aimed at over 100 people, which included 20 defendants who are in America and at large.

The FBI also said that Egyptian authorities charged 47 local unindicted co-conspirators, as they were also linked with the scam, which began in January 2007 and went on till September. This has turned out to be the largest group of people likely to get charged in a cyber crime case.

The 51-count indictment which was returned some weeks ago by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles stated that people arrested in Egypt sent emails to entice registered customers of Wells Fargo and Bank of America to counterfeit websites designed to steal targets’ usernames and passwords. As a result, the collected funds were transferred to new accounts setup in the two banks by those arrested in America.

Spokesperson for FBI's Los Angeles field office, Laura Eimiller said that those involved had tricked plenty of customers into divulging their online banking information. The group is said to have moved over $1.5 million to fake accounts.

The threat posed by phishing keeps growing all the time. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry consortium, a staggering 49,084 phishing sites were setup in the month of June, the second largest total recorded in a month.

The phenomenon of phishing has spread tremendously since it first began. With the number of phishing sites and cyber crimes spiraling, email users would do well to keep up their guard when corresponding over email. Always try and verify the identity of an email sender and never, never, never respond to suspicious-looking mails.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/07/AR2009100703682.html?wpisrc=newsletter#