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UK Gang Caught After $750K Online Music Fraud Scam

Posted by timothy on from the dj-felonious dept.

LSDelirious writes "10 individuals in the UK have been arrested in connection with an online fraud gang, whereby the group created several songs, had the songs uploaded to iTunes and Amazon, then used thousands of stolen credit cards to repeatedly purchase the songs from these services. It is estimated that they charged approximately $750,000 worth of fraudulent purchases, netting the group over $300,000 in royalties payments."

6 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Follow the money by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A new creative way to get cash off credit cards. Woop. At least it's better than getting goods delivered to a drop house and selling them at a pawn shop.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Follow the money by physicsphairy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Either way it is stupid to have some nexus to all of your crimes. The least they could have done was to buy iTunes gift certificates and *then* buy their own songs so it's not like the victim's credit card companies are sending them a bill saying a thousand songs were purchased from such and such band.

      They are also taking a big hit on their percentage.

      After thinking about it for a bit, this is my idea: you sell stuff on ebay that you don't have, but when someone buys it, you use the stolen credit card to buy it from a different seller and have it sent to them. Your purchases on the stolen card will be tied only to a variety of addresses and entities which have no connection to each other or to you, and you play the international game there may be little chance of the police ever talking to the recipients. Even if you're caught they have to do detective work on every transaction made to the account to establish that it was ultimately based on a stolen credit card. (Presumably all the payments being made to you are being made legally.) But if it is at all possible to shuffle money between bank accounts in an anonymous way (I have no idea whether it really is?) it should be possible to do this without being caught.

      --
      When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
  2. They used stolen credit cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...or stolen credit card *numbers*? TFA and TFS claim "cards". How exactly to you steal thousands of cards?

  3. Re:Way to think small by carlzum · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, they should have just put the song on a Russian MP3 site and sued them for $1.65 trillion

  4. Like premium rate phone lines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember when they first came in in the UK?

    The premium rate phone number renter was paid their cut monthly by BT.

    But ordinary subscribers are billed quarterly.

    So here's how some people made a lot of money.....

    Start two companies. One of them rents a load of premium rate numbers and phone lines. The other rents a load of ordinary phone lines.

    Company 2 then calls Company 1's premium rate lines incessently.

    For three months in a row, Co1 gets cheques from BT.

    At the start of Month 4 both companies get phone bills.

    At around the start of Month 6 Co 2 gets final reminders, and is possibily cut off from service and threatened with all sorts of legal actions.

    But, no matter, both Companies have vanished with around 6 hefty BT cheques.

    Profit!

    1. Re:Like premium rate phone lines by bertoelcon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why do the most ridiculous plans happen to sound the most plausible. Any less and it would be an obvious scam but for some reason you turn up the insane knob past 100% and the suspicion meter drops to like 5%.

      --
      Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.