A 15-year-old boy sneaking into a Cincinnati college's computer rooms and using checking accounts stolen from his parents and others to get access to adult VIP chat rooms - to the tune of $5,000 worth of stolen access - was arrested on Valentine's Day, after campus police worked with the Website's owner, Mark Prince of 2Much Internet Services, to catch the boy.
Prince and Xavier University campus police finally corralled the intruder when he was careless enough to tell a "girl... with whom he was chatting how he got into the VIP rooms. What the boy didn't know was that the girl he had reportedly fallen in love with - named Luna online, in the 2Much site LiveCamNetwork.com - was actually Prince.
"The way we were able to catch him involved discovering the IP address," Prince said in a statement. "[We traced] ownership of that IP address to Xavier University in Cincinnati - working with campus police and administrators to establish a pattern of usage."
The minor was arrested after he gave police a complete confession, 2Much noted in a company statement, "much to his parents' despondency." The parents have plenty of reason to be despondent - 2Much said they'll be held responsible for any punitive damages.
This was probably one of the luckier identity theft breaks. According to 2Much, Internet identity thieves often don’t get caught, whether they use their stolen account information for adult or mainstream access. 2Much hopes this case shoots a wake-up call to e-billing systems.
"[T]his adolescent has proved to the online community that there is still a long way to go in ensuring that billing systems prohibit the use of stolen information," the company statement said. "Larger corporations could potentially lose millions of dollars through identify theft and stolen information."
The company urges Web surfers who use checking or credit card accounts for site accesses - adult or mainstream - to be on guard even against their own teenagers, to check with Websites for security before sharing personal financial information, and to make sure that information can't be used, given away, or sold.
