Fugitive VOIP hacker cuffed in Mexico
More than 10 million minutes hijacked
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A fugitive hacker accused of illegally rerouting millions of dollars worth of VOIP calls through telecommunications companies' networks has been apprehended in Mexico.
Edwin Andres Pena was arrested Friday by Mexican authorities, Assistant US Attorney Erez Liebermann said. He had been on the lam since August 2006, when he skipped out on a $100,000 bond secured by the Miami home that belonged to the mother of his girlfriend. The US government is seeking to have him extradited.
Pena and cohort Robert Moore were arrested in June of 2006 and charged with felony wire and computer fraud. They were accused of carrying out a scheme that routed more than 10 million minutes of voice-over-internet-protocol calls over the networks of a dozen or so telecommunications providers without their permission. The suspects breached the networks by using brute force attacks that continually cycled through a large number of possible security telephone prefixes until the precise codes were determined.
To conceal the ruse, Pena hired Moore to scan for vulnerable networks of unsuspecting companies. Pena routed the calls through the hacked networks to prevent the telecommunications companies from detecting the true source of the traffic. Between June and October of 2005, Moore used a single AT&T broadband account to perform more than 6 million scans, according to court documents.
Moore pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer fraud. He is currently behind bars serving a two-year sentence. He is expected to be released in the next several months, according to this blog.
Word of Pena's capture was reported earlier by Computerworld.
Because his scheme piggybacked off the resources of others, virtually all of Pena's revenue was profit. That allowed him to sell long-distance calls for as low as four-tenths of a cent per minute. The scheme cost each of the defrauded telecom providers an average of $300,000 in routing expenses, prosecutors said.
Pena deposited more than $1m into several bank accounts he opened to launder the proceeds. He also directed the money to be spent on residential real estate in Miami, a 40-foot Sea Ray Mercruiser boat, a 2004 BMW M3, and several other high-priced luxury vehicles. ®
COMMENTS
There's a piece missing from this story
"Pena routed the calls through the hacked networks to prevent the telecommunications companies from detecting the true source of the traffic"
How the hell did they find out?
The numbers game
"... accused of illegally rerouting millions of dollars worth of VOIP calls ..."
"... accused of carrying out a scheme that routed more than 10 million minutes of voice-over-internet-protocol calls over the networks of a dozen or so telecommunications providers ..."
"... cost each of the defrauded telecom providers an average of $300,000 in routing expenses ..."
10,000,000 minutes into $3,600,000 = $0.36/min. Are those providers actually saying it cost them 36 cents per minute to route VOIP traffic? And what was with the judge? A (relatively) rich guy looking at a multi-year jail sentence, and they DIDN'T consider him a flight risk?
What's a hacker doing in Mexico anyways?
"Wait, wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You just give us the name of
one drug dealer. I could talk to him. I have good networking skills."
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