Phishing And The U.S.-Europe Link

By | May 11, 2005

A 23–year old man called Daniel A. Defelippi in the U.S. has pleaded guilty to three years of phishing and identity fraud, according to the the Democrat & Chronicle:

A Rochester man admitted Tuesday that he engaged in widespread identity theft, pilfering credit card numbers through fake Web sites and even collaborating with computer hackers in Eastern European countries.

So far there’s no more detail about the Eastern European angle, but attorneys are quoted as saying the fraud added up to about $400,000. Defelippi was arrested last December:

That arrest prompted a search of Defelippi’s Rochester-area business — Compumasters, at 3495 Winton Place — where the federal Secret Service unearthed evidence of a major identity-theft operation.

Among the items seized were devices to create counterfeit driver’s licenses and credit cards, and computers used to fabricate Web sites.

Defelippi, whose address was unavailable, admitted that he stole thousands of credit card numbers from unsuspecting people across the country.

It’s interesting to see how phishing and more traditional credit card fraud go hand in hand here, and how the phishing operation had a quite active U.S. end to it.

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