Nationwide Cybercrime Sweep Nets 125 Arrests
Update
Thu November 20, 2003
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday that law-enforcement agents had arrested 125 suspects in a crackdown on Internet crimes ranging from hacking to fraud to selling stolen goods.

The seven-week cybercrime sweep involved police from Ghana to Southern California and uncovered 125,000 victims who had lost more than $100 million, he told a news conference.

The information superhighway should be a conduit for communication, information and commerce, not an expressway for crime, Ashcroft said.

Those arrested stand charged with a variety of crimes that highlight the innumerable scams and criminal acts that now take place online.

Many are accused of selling stolen or nonexistent goods online, a leading cybercrime category. Suspects fenced stolen goods through online auction sites like eBay Inc. (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , set up phony escrow services to handle payments, and touted fraudulent investment clubs through slick Web sites, according to a summary of cases provided by the Department of Justice.

Suspects also stole classified files from government computers, hacked into business computers to steal customers' credit-card numbers, disabled computers running child-abuse hotlines, and sold counterfeit software or computer-memory chips, the Justice Department said.

It said one California man continued to send online death threats to a Canadian who he thought was sending him spam e-mail even after authorities asked him to stop.

U.S. Secret Service agents worked with foreign law enforcers to track down suspects who operated across international borders, leading to the arrest of a Romanian man who they said bilked some $500,000 from online auction participants.

Authorities in Ghana and Nigeria also helped track down suspects and recover millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.

Chief Postal Inspector Lee Heath said many suspects were simply transferring time-honored scams to the Internet.

We'd like to say it's just old wine in a new bottle, he said.

Federal agents said they had not yet found the perpetrators of the Blaster worm and SoBig e-mail virus that disabled millions of computers this summer, but had gained some valuable leads, thanks to a reward program set up by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) .

A similar cybercrime sweep in the first half of the year led to 135 arrests.

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