100 suspects charged under Operation Phish Phry

Operation Phish Phry is a joint cyber investigation by two countries and involves the United States Attorney's Office, FBI, Egyptian authorities and the Electronic Crimes Task Force in Los Angeles.

Since its formation two year ago, the authorities in both the nation have been trying to crack the whip on perpetrators of online phishing scams, which trick people into revealing their passwords and other information to fake Web sites.

Alleged violations
Cracking down on phishing scam, the federal authorities in California, Nevada and North Carolina arrested 33 people Wednesday. A total of 53 people have been charged for fraud, but 20 U.S. defendants remain at large.

In Egypt, the authorities have charged 47 co-conspirators in connection with the scam that ran from January 2007 to September this year.

As per the 51-count indictment, the 100 suspects have been accused of committing bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering.

The FBI said that this has been the largest number of people ever charged for the same cyber crime. If convicted, the conspirators could face a prison term of up to 20 years.

Details of the phishing scam
The scam targeted accounts of the two largest banks in the nation, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

In order to carry out the activity, the perpetrators in Egypt sent millions of spam emails, which appeared as authentic message from the banks.

The customers who clicked on the messages were connected to a fake bank Web site that resembled the legitimate one. The users were asked to submit information like bank account numbers, passwords, social security numbers etc.

In the meantime, the co-conspirators in United States used the information to transfer the money into their accounts.

The scam affected thousands of account holders and the amount of money stolen is around $1.5 million.

“It was very well done, it was very organized and everybody got paid,” said Keith B. Bolcar, the acting chief of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles bureau.

The scam highlights the ever growing problem of phishing. With the Internet expanding, such activities could pose serious problems. Earlier this week, Microsoft had reported phishing attack on Hotmail affecting more than 10, 000 users.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group has recently revealed that around 49,084 phishing Web sites were set up in June.

Commenting on the ever growing menace, Chet Wisniewski, senior security adviser at Sophos, a Web security firm, was quoted by New York Times, “I would imagine there are many different groups doing similar things,” he said. “You squash one bug and another one emerges. If there’s an opportunity to make money, someone will be there to collect the bill.”