U.S. Civil Charge Accuses Three Indian Hackers

A grand jury in the United States accused three Indian men for plotting a hack on U.S. online brokerage accounts. These accounts are known to be of TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., Charles Schwab Corp. and some others, said the U.S. Justice Department on March 12, 2007 that Zeenews published.

There are charges on the three Indians on a number of cases of plotting to commit computer fraud, identity fraud and securities fraud. Jaisanker Marimuthu, Chokalingam Ramanathan both from Chennai and Thirugnanam Ramanathan, an Indian living in Malaysia are the three accused, reported Oheraldo.in on March 12, 2007.

According to the Justice Department, the three men stole identities to fraudulently push up stock prices in a hack, pump and dump scheme. The men allegedly created accounts in their names to purchase shares in a number of weakly traded stocks. They then hacked others' accounts to make illegal purchases of the same stocks to push up their value. Later the trio sold those shares at high prices to make substantial profits, the U.S. government said.

Although the basic idea driving the fraud is simple, but the men employed sophisticated techniques, said Joe Stecher, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nebraska. All the methods belonged to a malicious scam that unlawfully accessed brokerage accounts in the country to pump up the share value and then dump them at profitable prices, officials said.

In connection with this case the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit against all the three persons in federal court of Nebraska on March 12, 2007.

These new high-tech frauds over identities and securities cause serious risks to brokerage firms and investors across the world, said Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher in a statement that Timesofindia.indiatimes published on March 12, 2007. He further said that the case demonstrated the commitment of the U.S. Justice Department to aggressively probe and prosecute such scams irrespective of their place of origin. He also commended the investigators and prosecutors for their extreme cooperation and fast action to track the source of the scam.

The victims in this case are at least 60 customers and nine brokerage companies.

Related article: U.S. Businesses Lose $712 Per Worker Due to Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 3/26/2007