Nigerian Man Charged in US Phishing Scam
FILE - In this Jan. 10, 2017 file photo, a 1040 tax form appears on display in New York.
A Nigerian man who overstayed his U.S. visa has been arrested in connection with a phishing scam and charged with fraud and identity theft.
Police in North Carolina arrested Daniel Adekunle Ojo for his role in a cybercrime that sought the tax information of 1,600 school district workers in Glastonbury, Connecticut.
Prosecutors said Ojo sent a bogus email to a school district employee, which appeared to be sent from another Glastonbury employee requesting the W-2 tax information of all employees. That employee then forwarded the information, which was used to file 122 false tax returns.
Officials said the Internal Revenue Service processed several of the fake returns and deposited nearly $37,000 in various bank accounts.
Prosecutors said they believe Ojo was also involved in similar email phishing schemes targeting school districts in Groton, Connecticut, and Bloomington, Minnesota.
A judge ordered Ojo to be detained and transferred from his home in North Carolina to Connecticut.
Officials said Ojo entered the United States in May 2016 on a visitor's visa and failed to leave the country the following month as required.
Don't Click That Link: Google Docs Ruse an Example of 'Future of Phishing'
Alphabet Inc. warned its users to beware of emails from known contacts asking them to click on a link to Google Docs after a large number of people turned to social media to complain that their accounts had been hacked. Google said Wednesday that it had taken steps to protect users from the attacks by disabling offending accounts and removing malicious pages. The attack used a relatively novel approach to phishing, a hacking technique designed to trick users…
Swiss Charge 3 Suspects in Global Phishing Case
Swiss prosecutors say they've charged three people accused of illegally obtaining data on at least 133,600 credit cards with computer fraud following their extradition from Thailand. The Swiss attorney general's office said Tuesday that the group for years earned a living from the unlawful procurement and fraudulent online use of credit card data. It said that "credit card holders around the world and Swiss financial institutions'' were…
Sophisticated Phishing Campaign Targets Iranian Diaspora
Western-based Iranian civil-society activists subject to an elaborate scam to steal their email accounts
By Doug Bernard