http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/091208-romanian-phishing-busts-were-years.html



By Robert McMillan 

IDG News Service

09/12/2008



The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation spent years laying the 

groundwork for an investigation that led to the arrest of dozens of 

people involved in illegal phishing scams operated from Romania and the 

U.S., a senior FBI official said Friday.



Shawn Henry, who was appointed assistant director of the FBI's Cyber 

Division earlier this week, said he began meeting with Romanian police 

and lawmakers, including the country's minister of technology and 

minister of justice, in 2003 to help tackle the country's growing 

cybercrime problem.



Romanian crime gangs were hurting U.S. banks by tricking customers into 

giving up account numbers and passwords on phony "phishing" Web sites, 

but Romanian officials soon realized that the problem was also affecting 

businesses at home, too, because the problem was so bad that some 

companies were simply blocking all Internet traffic from Romania.



"Just at the time they were trying to merge with the West and get into 

NATO ... the U.S. and other Western nations were shutting them down 

because of the threat of crime," Henry said. "If they did not take this 

problem seriously, they were going to be left in the dark."



Since then Romania has taken some major steps to crack down on 

cybercrime, he said, by adding new hacking laws and strengthening its 

ability to fight computer crime. "They really committed themselves to 

the problem."



[...]





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Received on Sun Sep 14 2008 - 23:20:43 PDT