Setting up an imitation MSN-related Website to steal credit and account information from actual MSN Internet customers turned into a guilty plea to wire fraud for a Chicago man here.
Matthew Thomas Guevara was scheduled for a December 5 sentencing, facing a maximum five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine, the Justice Department told IDG News Service.
Guevara pleaded in a case in which he admitted setting up msnbilling.com and aimed it to harvest personal financial and account information, sending e-mail from Hotmail accouts to MSN customers asking them to visit msnbilling.com and update account information, but that information was forwarded to one of Guevara's e-mail accounts, the DOJ told IDG.
So-called phishing – setting up sites mimicking familiar sites and tricking surfers into giving up various kinds of personal information – has come under increased scrutiny by the government and by the Internet's critical players in the past year.
EarthLink and the FBI together, for example, gave a joint July statement warning customers about a hike in phishing – a month before EarthLink hit a Vancouver spam ring with litigation charging them with using EarthLink e-mail to support a phishing site whose targets were America Online customers, IDG said.
Both the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission have reported spikes in phishing over recent months, the FTC saying identity theft – the apparent primary cause of phishing sites – was the top consumer complaint reported to that agency over the last three years.
