Accused AOL phisher spammed the FBI
An Ohio woman accused in federal court of using mass forged e-mails from "AOL security" to swindle America Online subscribers out of their credit card numbers was allegedly tracked down after spamming exactly the wrong person: an FBI agent specializing in computer fraud, according to court records.
Helen Carr pleaded not-guilty last week to a two count federal indictment charging her with conspiring with colleagues in the spam community to send mass e-mails to AOL subscribers purporting to be from "Steve Baldger" from AOL's security department.
The messages claimed that AOL's last attempt to bill the recipient's credit card had failed, and included a link to an "AOL Billing Center" webpage, where an online form demanded the user's name, address, credit card number, expiration date, three-digit CCV number and credit card limit.
In recent years the so-called "phishing" scams have developed as a popular and annoying technique for fraudsters to swindle people out of everything from PayPal accounts to ATM codes. Despite some publicity surrounding fake e-mails from PayPal, AOL, eBay, CitiBank, Barclays, and other businesses, enough Internet users are still falling for the scam for it remain profitable, says Dan Clements, founder of CardCops, a business that tracks credit card abuse. "People do respond to these, especially when they hit AOL," says Clements. "AOL users are the newbies, so they're way more susceptible to these scams."
