Accused AOL phisher spammed the FBI

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32938.html

By Kevin Poulsen
SecurityFocus
Posted: 20/09/2003

An Ohio woman accused in federal court of using mass forged e-mails 
from "AOL security" to swindle America Online subscribers out of their 
credit card numbers was allegedly tracked down after spamming exactly 
the wrong person: an FBI agent specializing in computer fraud, 
according to court records. 

Helen Carr pleaded not-guilty last week to a two count federal 
indictment charging her with conspiring with colleagues in the spam 
community to send mass e-mails to AOL subscribers purporting to be 
from "Steve Baldger" from AOL's security department. 

The messages claimed that AOL's last attempt to bill the recipient's 
credit card had failed, and included a link to an "AOL Billing Center" 
webpage, where an online form demanded the user's name, address, 
credit card number, expiration date, three-digit CCV number and credit 
card limit. 

In recent years the so-called "phishing" scams have developed as a 
popular and annoying technique for fraudsters to swindle people out of 
everything from PayPal accounts to ATM codes. Despite some publicity 
surrounding fake e-mails from PayPal, AOL, eBay, CitiBank, Barclays, 
and other businesses, enough Internet users are still falling for the 
scam for it remain profitable, says Dan Clements, founder of CardCops, 
a business that tracks credit card abuse. "People do respond to these, 
especially when they hit AOL," says Clements. "AOL users are the 
newbies, so they're way more susceptible to these scams." 

But an FBI agent in the Norfolk field office was apparently not taken 
in when he received one of the e-mails in February, 2001. Not the most 
sophisticated variant on the scam, the message came from 
"precious44257166 () aol com" and was sent to 19 other AOL users at the 
same time. The webpage was served by Geocities. "[A] legitimate AOL 
billing center would not be found at this location," agent Joseph 
Yuhasz wrote in an affidavit in the case. 

Yuhasz sent a copy of the webpage to what was then the Special 
Technologies and Applications Unit of the bureau's National 
Infrastructure Protection Center, which determined that the site was 
designed to e-mail its ill-gotten bounty to a particular Yahoo 
account. 

 From there, a cooperative Yahoo official and some helpful ISPs led 
the g-man to homes in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Subsequent raids on
the homes yielded quick confessions from a professional spammer and a
credit card thief, both of whom snitched on Carr, naming her as the
ringleader of the operation, according to the FBI affidavit. A search
of Carr's Ohio home turned up two computers packed with files relating
to the scam. Carr allegedly admitted to agents that she had a role in
the operation.

It was a lot of crime-busting for a petty scam. But then, Exhibit A 
was sent right to the FBI's inbox. 

"Because she's in the U.S., they went after her," says Clements. "The 
significant portions of these scams come from foreign servers, in 
which the hackers have root access, so you basically can't track them 
down." 

Trial in the case is set for November. 



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