Facebook data used to steal £35,000 from online bank accounts
A man has been sentenced to prison for 15 months for using personal data gathered from neighbours’ Facebook and Friends Reunited postings to hack their bank accounts and steal more than £35,000.
Iain Wood, who owns a carpet-fitting business, befriended people who lived in his block of flats in Newcastle on social networking sites such as Facebook, and used the sites to find out as much personal information about them as possible.
With this data, Wood was able to access victims’ bank accounts and ordered replacement bank cards to be delivered to his address. He then used these to withdraw more than £35,000 between June 2008 and June 2010, which he spent on gambling.
