UK court dishes out 13 years' porridge to e-fraudsters
Cyber-cops: £1m phishermen had 40 bogus bank sites
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Three fraudsters have been jailed for a combined total of 13 years and six months over their involvement in a sophisticated phishing fraud against UK and international banks.
Ayodeji Kareem, 38, Vincent Alonge, 31, and Babatunde Fafore, 41, were all jailed at a hearing at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday. All three defendants, who were arrested in August 2010 in raids in the UK and Ireland, had pleaded guilty to fraud back in May. Kareem was jailed for five years and five months, while Alonge was sent down for two years. Fafore was jailed for five years and seven months.
Together the trio participated in a crime that affected tens of thousands of victims and resulted in losses of millions of pounds.
Investigators reckons the frudsters compromised more than 900 bank accounts and 10,000 credit cards, raiding £599,000 from compromised banks accounts and stealing £570,000 from stolen credit cards in the process. The conmen harvested bank login details and other sensitive information after setting-up 40 bogus bank web-pages, promoted using spam emails. Attempted fraudulent transfers and transactions exceeded £4.2m.
Financial investigators are continuing attempts to unravel the fraud and confiscate the proceeds of the scam.
The case, codenamed Operation Dynamophon, was investigated by officers from the Met's Police Central e-Crime Unit. Irish police arrested Fafore, who was resident in County Cavan at the time of his arrest last year. Four further individuals arrested at the time of the original operation were released without charge.
In a statement, DI Colin Wetherill, Police Central e-Crime Unit, said: "In collaboration with law enforcement colleagues and industry partners both in the UK and overseas, we are working to identify and bring to justice those committing serious and organised offences of this nature online, and to reduce the harm they cause to innocent individuals and to the economy. These convictions represent a significant step forward.
"However, we all have a role to play in the protection of our private information and we would urge the public to exercise great care when supplying their personal details online, and to take the advice given at www.getsafeonline.org". ®
COMMENTS
One thing I really can't stand
is people who add up the sentences of all the accomplices to come up with a completely useless and meaningless number, in this case 13.
Two of them were sentenced for 5 1/2 years, and one was sentenced for 2 years, which means they will spend about half that time behind bars, or these days, probably about 1/3 of the time behind bars and 1/6 of the time back home with an electronic tag.
but where's the punishment?
divided by three, even the 500K represents better than 5 years salary to most people, I bet it's sitting in an African bank as none of them are UK born, all migrants.
I am aware of that
Yes, I am aware of that. However, nobody was sentenced for 13 years. The longest sentence was 5 years 7 months. Yes, if you add 5 years 7 months + 5 years 5 months + 2 years, you get 13 years, but it is a completely meaningless figure.
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