European Mob Nets Victims In Australia
Newcastle Herald
Thursday May 27, 2004
EASTERN European organised crime families using the internet to extort and steal far from home are aiming at Australians.
Delegates at the annual AusCERT Asia Pacific Internet Security Conference on the Gold Coast were warned yesterday that mobsters were hiring computer programmers to take their brand of criminal activity online.
The deputy head of Britain's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, Superintendent Mick Deats, said one eastern European syndicate involved in prostitution, drugs and gun smuggling was also earning money all over the world from internet credit card fraud, software piracy, child pornography and online extortion.
``This particular group, to our knowledge so far, employ 10 programmers," he said.
For several months, Australian law enforcement officers have been in the UK as part of a joint investigation into the syndicate after it focused on banks in Australia using a method known as ``phishing" the mass delivery of unsolicited emails to discover bank account details.
``Australia is a focus of a lot of the phishing activity at the moment," Supt Deats said.
``The people we've arrested in London were sending money to the same people that are receiving money from attacks that are happening in Australia."
Another tactic linked to several eastern European crime syndicates was bombarding internet businesses with a flood of requests aimed at overloading systems and shutting them down.
The businesses were then told to pay $50,000 to make the attacks go away, he said. AAP
© 2004 Newcastle Herald
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