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Scamming Spammer Hooks the Wrong Person

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the line-and-sinker dept.

CrypticSpawn writes "Read on SecurityFocus, a 55 year old woman spammed an FBI computer crime agent. She got caught mailing off a credit card scam to AOL users." Her scam targeted AOL users with messages saying their credit cards were refused during the last billing cycle, and linked to a false billing center page which demanded private information.

5 of 408 comments (clear)

  1. Spammers and law enforcement by ergo98 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I suspect that a vast majority of spams hit a large number of law enforcement inboxes - it isn't like spammers are selectively making hand-crafted to lists. Of the spams I get (of which there has been a marked increase in the past month), a good percentage are illegal or gray-legal pennystock pump and dumps, PayPal imitators attempting to get your information, or our good Nigerian friends looking for some assistance in rescuing their money.

  2. bigger catch than just that by ethelred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    An electronic trail of stolen AOL accounts and free Web pages led agents to raid the homes of a professional spammer and a credit card thief, both of whom snitched on Carr, naming her as the ringleader of the operation

    She isn't the only one going down. But, sadly, there are still many more to go...

    --

    Remember: If you buy anything from spammers, you have a small penis.
  3. Hooks the wrong person? by Zuke8675309 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article makes it sound like she wouldn't have got caught if an FBI agent hadn't been a recepient of the email. I hope this isn't the case and that the FBI is taking a more pro-active attack on this kind of thing than what the article seems to say.

  4. Logic 101... by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Actually what it teaches us is

    - Criminals don't wear stripes and sound like Cagney

    - For any scam the best approach is to target the largest user group... more people means more idiots

    - The FBI staff use personal email

    This is exactly what you should expect, the FBI aren't a mixed race of mutant beings, and large crimes can be commited by pretty much anyone.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  5. Re:Let em guess she was American ? by ljavelin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry, but it is incredibly naive of you to assume that only "computer idiots" fall for these scams.

    They are very convincing... stealing all the branding of a legit informational email. I'll tell you, my mom and dad just cannot tell the difference between http://www.citibank.com/signup/account.jsp and http://www.citibank.com@192.168.0.1/acct.jsp.

    These scams can be compelling to people who don't understand that ALL email should be untrusted, and that all URLs within email should be untrusted, and that all forms that you fill out should be untrusted.