Thursday, June 11, 2015

A Nigerian in Spain arrested for phishing and online shopping with stolen credentials


From Spanish news source "ElComercio" we bring you this phishing story - about a Nigerian citizen arrested in Spain.  Click the Spanish headline for the original story.   A Google-translate-assisted version of the story is shared below for the convenience of our English-speaking readers with permission from Olaya!)

Detenido un nigeriano por realizar compras 'on line' con datos robados a cien víctimas

(A Nigerian Arrested locally for online shopping with a hundred victims' stolen data)
Olaya Suarez, Gijon @OlayaSuarez0

 A 44 year-old Nigerian citizen was arrested locally for defrauding hundreds of people by using their bank details to make purchases online and then resell these products on the black market. The National Police estimates that he gained more than 50,000 euros in this way.
 
The investigation began in September 2014 after receiving the first reports of victims whose banking data had been used illegally for various internet shopping portals. Police work was arduous and complex, but eventually determine that all the fraud in Spain was the work of a single author, but that he used different identities and operated using WIFI connections in private homes, cafes and public  spaces, thus trying to hinder their location.

After months of investigations, officers of the Economic Crime group of the Brigade of Judicial Police Station Gijon found that the suspect had fixed his residence in Gijon, "where he received shipments getting their illicit activity," sources said the police station.

A job as a lure

"The person under investigation belonged to a criminal organization operating transnational nature of the internet and dedicated to credit card fraud and debit cards. The network operated by credentials and numbers for bank cards using different methods, from cloning, 'phishing' or 'hacking' of online data, "says the police.
 
After obtaining this data, the fraud is facilitated through servers and private links to other members of the organization in exchange for financial compensation. The Nigerian resident in Gijon, allegedly, took this information and using it, effected purchases of technological devices such as televisions, tablets, laptops or mobile phones.
 
Each week they conducted three or four purchases of items using many identities and facilitating different directions for collection, "but always expecting the dealers on the street to avoid the reliable verification of your address." "Under the pretext of facilitating the work identified in the street before the workers of delivery companies and so getting the immediate delivery of the item, the cost would be charged to the person who had fraudulently obtained card information» , reports the National Police.
 
All of the material obtained in this way coming back into the virtual market since it was offering immediately in Internet-based ad pages to people unaware of its illicit origin and not belonging to this criminal network. Despite all the precautions taken by the investigation to hide his true location, the officers managed to identify and establish a means for his arrest. His precise location was noted when he was picking up one of his orders and he was taken to the police station.

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