Stealing From Banks One Cent at a Time

JRHelgeson writes "In a story strangely reminiscent of Superman 3, a 'hacker' allegedly stole over $50,000 from PayPal, Google Checkout as well as several unnamed online brokerage firms. When opening an online brokering account it is common practice for companies such as E-trade and Schwab to send a tiny payment — ranging from only a few cents to a couple of dollars — to verify that the user has access to the bank account listed. According to the story, the attacker wrote a script that opened thousands of accounts at dozens of these providers. He was arrested not for taking the money, but for using false names in order to get it."

Comments

Superman 3?

[jandrese]

How is this like Superman 3? I thought the point in that movie was to shave off the remainders in interest calculations. This is just a simple case of seeing someone transfer a few cents to your account when you open it and trying to abuse the system. The problem of course is that it's extremely obvious and you'll get caught, just like this guy did.

Re:Let's

[tha_mink]

Sign up for a gazillion Paypal accounts, use ONE bank account, and after Paypal deposits the money, withdraw the money and close the account. Tried it. Paypal doesn't allow multiple accounts with the same bank account information.