It seems that the saying ‘no crime goes unpunished’, isn’t always the case, or at least in Thomas Taylor’s situation anyway. A U.S. Connecticut native, Thomas Taylor and friends used fake electronic greeting cards to spread serious malware that for four years was used to hijack sensitive financial information from trusting AOL users.
So how did he do it exactly? AOL members first were hit with spammed ecards supposedly sent from either BlueMountain.com or Hallmark.com. However, these bogus ecards contained a little gift for the recipient in the form of a malware payload.
This malicious software was a Trojan horse used to trick users into passing along sensitive info such as banking information, social security numbers, and other personal info by preventing AOL customers from logging into their accounts, and instead inputted their info into bogus sites that the hackers had control of.
Once the hackers had control of all of this sensitive information, they then used it to make fake ATM cards that they could then use to cash out the account completely, or use to buy merchandise like gaming consoles, gift cards, and laptops among others.
Unfortunately, Taylor copped a guilty plea to fraud and identity theft and is apparently avoiding jail time. Instead he was sentenced to four years of probation and ordered to pay restitution to the victims in the amount of 33,714 dollars. I think that for someone involved in such blatant theft of personal information, they should definitely do some jail time and not just be put on probationary discipline.
Fortunately though, they didn’t all get off so easy. The mastermind behind the whole operation, one Michael Dunn managed to land himself seven years of prison time for his efforts in 2008. Too bad they aren’t all given such a sentence, if only for the distress and mental pain they caused their victims.
For myself, I know how tight money can be from week to week and if someone cleaned me out one day, I would be in very dire straits indeed. That sort of distress is unnecessary and people who cause it should be punished appropriately. Probation is just too easy.
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