p2pnet.net News:- America unleashed the full power of its national and state enforcement and police services on Underground Networks, a small US website with a tiny membership – not the 7,000 widely reported.

“They got 7000 from the udgnet forums,” as a p2pnet Reader’s Write says. “In actuality there are a few hundred.”

But ‘file sharing’ stories are sexy and guarantee headlines, the ‘case’ was front-paged around the world and now, riding the crest of this massive PR tsunami, the DoJ has splashed Operation Web Snare involving 36 US Attorney offices, the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, 37 of the FBI’s 56 field divisions, 13 of the Postal Inspection Service’s 18 field divisions, the FTC, together with a variety of other federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement agencies.

It resulted in the arrests or convictions of a 150 people “and the return of 117 criminal complaints, indictments, and informations in a collaborative nationwide enforcement operation directed at major forms of online economic crime and other cybercrimes,” says the DoJ.

It, “also shows that America’s justice community is seeking to anticipate, out think and adapt to new trends in Internet crime,” says attorney General John Ashcroft.

Web Snare ran from June 1 to August 26 and, “Investigators have identified more than 150,000 victims with estimated losses of more than $215 million,” says a statement. “More than 140 search and seizure warrants were executed as part of the operation, and prosecutors have obtained 117 criminal complaints, informations, and indictments to date.”

Outlined in the statement were:

• The first case involving DoS (denial of service attacks) for commercial advantage
• An online ‘parts for sale‘ scam
• An attempt to con the Eddie Bauer company out of $685,000 by threatening to release photos showing child being used in the production of Eddie Bauer apparel online
• A chat-room credit card fraud scheme

Web Snare, “represents a significant component of law enforcement’s concerted and coordinated response to the rising numbers of reports about Internet-related economic crime to government agencies and other organizations, says the DoJ, going on:

“The Federal Trade Commission reported that Internet-related complaints accounted for 55 percent of all consumer fraud reports that it received in 2003, up from 45 percent in 2002. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) – a joint project of the FBI and the National White-Collar Crime Center – reported that it referred 71,442 Internet-related fraud complaints to law enforcement in 2003, and 42,183 Internet-related fraud complaints in the first half of 2004. (By comparison, the IC3 referred to law enforcement 48,252 Internet-related fraud complaints in 2002, and 16,775 Internet-related fraud complaints in 2001.)

“For some types of online crime, such as ‘phishing’ – the use of emails and websites resembling those of legitimate organizations to commit identity theft and fraud – the incidence of reporting has grown dramatically. In the first six months of 2004, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry coalition, the number of unique phishing attacks increased by more than 800 percent – from 176 in January, 2004 to 1,422 in June, 2004.”

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2004 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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