Man pockets $8m running computer fraud ring A New Hampshire man has admitted pocketing almost $8 million in a scheme that infected people's computers with software that forced their modems to surreptitiously dial premium phone numbers. Asu Pala, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and five counts of failing to filed a US income tax …
"10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or twice the gain or loss on each count. He will also be required to pay restitution to each of the known victims and to the Internal Revenue Service."
Normally when we see these stories, I find myself doing the math and concluding "crime does pay." I hope more get nailed with these kind of fines for this type of scumbaggery!
My math is clearly better then your reading comprehension.
If you ACTUALLY read my post, I was prasing this ruling becasue the fines exceeded the net income..
Contrast with the a story like this I commented on in 2009 (which not only did they not, but if you use the jailtime to make it into an hourly wage they made a KILLING per hour):
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2009/12/17/china_jails_game_trojan_vxers/#c_651177
The article states that the scam was running from 2003-07, i.e. 4 years. Assume $8m and 250 victims over that period, that gives you $8m / (250 vic * 48mth) = $667 per victim per month over a period of 4 years.
That's not a lot if you're a company, and might well be below the threshold of being noticed. The guys in the accounts department might even have noticed when it first spiked, but not worried about it once it flattened out over the next few months.
Having seen phone bills for a company of about 60 people I certainly can see this happening... $700 (at the time, about the same amount in Euros, if memory serves) is simply within normal tolerances for some.
10 years for a financial crime? How many violent assaults and rapes lead to much shorter stays in prison? Take his money and give him a taste of prison. Keep the limited prison space for people you need to keep away from society because they are violent and have physically and psychologically damaged people.
His victims didn't even notice.
Just shows how gullible businesses can be when accepting telephone bills as gospel. Do they even have audits?
One technique that blocks these scams is requiring extensions to dial a personal identifier code for all long distance. This type of software can't, usually, handle such quirks as that.
It's good news he was caught and convicted. However, there is a definite problem in the way cases like this are dealt with. He should be required to finish making full restitution before he is allowed to begin paying either his fine or his taxes. After all, there's no guarantee that he has enough money, in addition to his ill-gotten gains, which all came from his victims, to pay out any more money. It will be difficult enough to deal with the fact that he likely spent some of his ill-gotten gains before he was caught.
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