Rampant Issue of Internet Crimes

Introduction 

In recent years, Internet crimes have become more rampant because criminals have turned to the use of sophisticated skills to commit these crimes (Kosseff, 2017). The convenient, fast, and elusive nature of the internet contributed to the tendency of cybercriminals to taking part in illegal activities that harm individuals and organizations. Cybercrimes can be classified into several categories because of the diverse nature of content and information available on the internet. These categories include identify theft, financial fraud, copyright infringement, cyber-extortion, espionage, and phishing scams. In the United States, internet crimes are common with multiple cases of cybercrimes being reported every year. This paper discusses the details a few examples of past internet crimes, the specific laws that were broken and their prosecutions. 

Travon Williams Case 

This case is available on this website: https://www.securityweek.com/price-cybercrime-9-years-one-case-6-months-another 

Travon Williams is a thirty-four-year-old individual who was arrested in August 2017 and subsequently charged as one of twelve defendants in a cybercrime case involving the theft of credit card details. Williams was identified as the ring leader of a gang of cybercriminals. Williams and his gang would make anonymous purchases of stolen debit card and credit card information from the dark web for criminal purposes. The complex nature of the dark web has been a challenge for law enforcement agencies amidst the rising cases of criminal activities originating from there. In this case, Williams and his gang would then encode the numbers of the stolen cards into other fraudulent cards and use them to purchase merchandise from stores. The gang, then based in Northern Virginia, would mostly buy cartons of cigarettes and gift cards and sell them to buyers from New York area. 

Prior to his arrest, Travon Williams had obtained a total of $415,000 from the criminal activity within a period of two and a half years. Despite the complex nature of the case, law enforcement agencies were able to unmask this credit card racket leading to the arrest of Travon Williams and his gang for committing crimes in violation of the law as described in the federal code 15 U.S.C. 1644 – Fraudulent use of Credit Cards (Lee & Scott, 2017). Like the other members of his gang, Travon Williams pleaded guilty on his prosecution to the charges and was sentenced to nine years in jail by the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

Sanford Wallace Case 

This case is available on this website: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/spam-king-sanford-wallace-sentenced-2-years-facebook-scheme-n592651 

In 2016, a forty-seven-year-old hacker was sentenced to thirty months in jail for sending more than 27 million spam messages to different Facebook users. This hacker was Sanford Wallace, or “Spam King,” as he used to call himself. Wallace compromised more than half a million Facebook accounts through internet phishing. Phishing is the fraudulent activity where the perpetrator sends emails or links to websites that appear to be legitimate for the purpose of harvesting the personal information of the unsuspecting users. 

Wallace used to send links to external websites to different Facebook users in an elaborate plan to scam them. When these users clicked on the links, Wallace would harvest their log-in credentials as well as details of the other users in the accounts’ friends list. He would then send the Facebook users in the friends list links to the websites where and repeat the cycle by harvesting the friends’ lists of those accounts as well. This way, Wallace would earn money by directing traffic to the said websites. 

Although most of Wallace’s criminal activity was mainly focused on Facebook, his career in spamming did not start there. Wallace’s fraudulent behavior began way back in the ‘90s when he used to send junk messages on the fax machine. On previous encounters with Facebook and MySpace, Wallace faced civil suits that earned him hefty fines. The thirty-month prison sentence for Wallace came with fines amounting to $310,000. 

According to the details of his indictment in 2011, Wallace used the names Laura Frederix and David Frederix as aliases for his fraudulent activities, along with other 1500 fake internet domains. With these aliases and domains, Wallace would lure Facebook users into clicking a link that would automatically capture their user credentials and the details of their friend lists. Wallace violated the CAN-SPAM Act (federal code 18 U.S.C. Section 1037) that criminalizes any activity of obtaining email addresses through improper means (Mullen, Daniels & Gilmour, 2011).  

Stanislav Lisov Case 

This case is available on this website: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/russian-hacker-who-used-neverquest-malware-steal-money-victims-bank-accounts-pleads 

This case involves Stanislav Lisov, a Russian hacker who used malware to steal money from the bank accounts of his victims. Lisov used malicious software known as NeverQuest to infiltrate the computer systems of his victims and steal the credentials for their online banking accounts, and then use that information to siphon out money from the accounts. As with many other types of cybercrimes, Lisov’s criminal activities extended across the borders. Many unsuspecting victims from around the world ended up losing their money to Lisov’s fraudulent activities. Bank fraud does not only cause financial harm but also exposes the victims to risks of privacy infringements. 

Stanislav Lisov used his programming skills to spread a banking Trojan containing malware that would gather banking information from his victims. The Trojan was spread through social media websites and file transfers as well. Lisov would then use this information to steal from the victims and also sell the information to other third parties. Furthermore, he created a network of victim computers called “botnet.” This network contained millions of stolen credentials including the passwords, usernames, and security questions and answers captured from the victims’ computers. The money abducted by Lisov using his malware amounted to $855,000, with other unsuccessful attempts for financial transactions worth $4.4 million. 

Lisov was first detained in January 2017 in Barcelona, Spain and a trial held in Madrid the same year where he pleaded not guilty. Following these developments, the Spanish government processed his extradition to the United States. Stanislav Lisov pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to distribute malicious software in a federal court in Manhattan. This case, therefore, describes an internet crime that goes contrary to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which is an amendment to the federal code 18 U.S.C. Section 1030 (Schroeder, 2012).  

Conclusion 

Cybercrimes are criminal activities that are of a complex nature. As seen in some of the cases discussed here, some cybercriminals use the dark to facilitate their criminal activities hence making it hard for law enforcement agencies to track and arrest them. However, with concerted efforts from the different local and international agencies such as the FBI and Interpol, the arrest and indictment rates for cybercriminals have gone high. Even though it can take a long time for some cybercriminals to be arrested and convicted, the cooperation and institutional efforts of these law enforcement agencies have ensured that this type of crime is cracked down. 

Cybercrimes may different forms such as bank fraud, phishing, copyright infringement, and credit card theft, among others. This type of crime does not only cause financial harm but can also lead to the exposure of sensitive information that can cause the collapse of institutions or even governments. Although there are laws that criminalize cybercrimes, it is crucial for more serious penalties to be introduced in cybercrime to deter individuals from taking part in such activities. 

References 

Kosseff, J. (2017).  Cybersecurity law . Hoboken: Wiley. 

Lee, J. G., & Scott, G. G. (2017).  Preventing credit card fraud: A complete guide for everyone from merchants to consumers . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 

Mullen, J., Daniels, D., & Gilmour, D. (2011).  Email Marketing: An Hour a Day . New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. 

Schroeder, S. (2012).  The lure: The true story of how the Department of Justice brought down two of the world's most dangerous cyber criminals . Boston: Course Technology PTR.