Want to earn up to $4.2 million? Then find the hackers on the FBI’s most wanted list. Or at least give the FBI information leading to their arrest and/or conviction. These snakes have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars. Here is the list from the hackernews.com:
Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev (reward: $3 million)
- Ironically, one of his aliases is one of the most common (and thus easily cracked) passwords: lucky12345.
- He’s the brains behind the GameOver Zeus botnet and CryptoLocker Ransomware.
- Over a million computers were infected with this malware, causing nearly $100 million in losses.
Nicolae Popescu (reward: $1 million)
- From Romania, Popescu tricked Americans with fraudulent auction posts on various websites.
- AutoTrader.com, Cars.com and eBay were some of these sites.
- He was selling cars that didn’t exist. (Please, people, never, ever send money for something as grand as a car unless you have proof it exists—which includes actually test driving it!)
- Hundreds of people sent money without ever seeing more than an ad for the cars. If you think that’s bad, it gets worse: Some of the victims handed over their money for private planes and yachts! Nearly 800 people didn’t have on their thinking caps, but this doesn’t make Popescu’s deed any less obscene.
Alexsey Belan (reward: $100,000)
- Belan breached the cybersecurity systems of three big U.S. based e-commerce sites.
- He then tried to sell all of these stolen databases, which included passwords.
Peteris Sahurovs (reward: $50,000)
- His crime involved creating and selling malware by putting ads up on various websites.
- These advertisements forced users to buy the phony antivirus software that the ads pitched.
- If the user declined the purchase, their desktop would be bombarded with phony security alerts and pop-ups.
- This crook from Latvia collected over $2 million with the scheme.
Shailesh Kumar Jain (reward: $50,000)
- Despite the name, Jain is a U.S. citizen.
- He scored $100 million in less than two years.
- He should have quit while he was ahead (maybe after the first $10 mil?), but he just couldn’t earn enough, so he kept hacking away at unsuspecting Internet users.
With fraudulent e-mails and pop-up ads, he tricked users into thinking their computers were infected with malware, and then sold them his fake antivirus software packages for $30 to $70. Do the math: Can you imagine how many people got rooked?
Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to BestIDTheftCompanys.com discussing identity theft prevention.
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