38 indicted in international phishing scam
Thousands victimized in Internet scheme said to stretch from Romania to Orange County.
By JON CASSIDY
The Orange County Register


Thirty-eight people have been charged in two related phishing scams that stretched from Romania to Orange County, costing thousands of victims more than $3 million, officials said.

The investigation involved several federal and foreign law enforcement agencies as well as eight Orange County police departments, and resulted in a 65-count indictment of 33 people filed Monday in Los Angeles, as well as indictments of seven people in Connecticut on charges including racketeering, bank fraud and identity theft.

In a phishing scam, mass e-mails are sent out to lure victims into providing their personal and financial information to a legitimate-looking Web site. The data is then used to withdraw cash or make purchases.

Two Romanians, Ovidiu-Ionut Nicola-Roman and Petru Bogdan Belbita, described as ringleaders of the two crime rings, were charged in both cases.

"Criminals who exploit the power and convenience of the Internet do not recognize national borders; therefore our efforts to prevent their attacks cannot end at our borders either," Deputy Attorney General Mark R. Filip said in a statement from Bucharest, where he announced the charges with the Romania's prosecutor general.

The case is the first time that RICO racketeering charges have been used in a phishing case, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

Officials have made five arrests locally over the last two days -- including two in Costa Mesa -- and are seeking four other suspects; Romanian authorities are also making arrests in the case.

More than half of the people charged are from Romania, where authorities say the scams were based.

According to the indictment, the Romanians obtained thousands of credit and debit card accounts and related personal information, sending out more than 1.3 million spam emails in just one phishing attack. These "suppliers" would then send the information to "cashiers" in the U.S., many of them based in Little Saigon, who would encode the data onto all sorts of magnetic cards - anything from ATM cards to hotel keys or casino cards.

The "cashiers" would then tell "runners" to test out the cards, and then use the ones that worked all over Southern California at ATMs or registers that had the highest withdrawal limits. A portion of the proceeds would be sent back to the suppliers, authorities said.

The case filed in Los Angeles relied on a lot of work by Orange County police departments, Eimiller said. The investigation involved the Orange County District Attorney's Office and the Seal Beach, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Westminster, Fullerton and Anaheim police departments.

"It wouldn't have been a success without all the agencies there," Eimiller said. "We had virtually no leads on this case back in December. We had a bunch of photographs of people withdrawing money."

Those photographs were published by the media, leading to a tip on the identity of one of the suspects, Eimiller said. That information enabled authorities to crack the ring, Eimiller said.

At the federal and international levels the investigation involved the Romanian General Inspectorate of Police, the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, IRS-Criminal Investigation, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Secret Service.

One person accused in the conspiracy, Seuong Wook Lee, pleaded guilty last week in Los Angeles to racketeering conspiracy, bank fraud, access device fraud and unauthorized access of a protected computer.

Costa Mesa police arrested Hiep Thanh Tran and Caroline That at a hotel Sunday night.

Alex Chung Luong, Nga Ngo, Thai Hoang Nguyen were also arrested.

Authorities are looking for Leonard Gonzales, Dung Phan, Sonny Duc Vo, and Loi Tan Dang.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/auth ... e-eimiller