Hackers, swindlers held over fraud

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Shanghai Daily, November 26, 2015
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Shanghai police have busted a group of swindlers who hacked into more than 30 famous online shopping websites, using the customer information gained to commit telephone fraud.

One of the hacked websites called Huangpu District police after receiving around 200 complaints from customers in July about suspicious service calls.

According to the unnamed fashion product website, its customers complained that they had received calls from people claiming to be service staff, requesting their bank account information. The callers had detailed information about the customers' online orders, including delivery address and price of the products they had purchased. They then claimed that the products were out of stock or had quality problem, and asked the customers to provide their bank account information to collect refund. Some fell for the ruse and were swindled of money before they contacted the website.

The website then realized that its computer system had been hacked, which led to the leakage of its customer information.

Police looked up the IP code on the hacked computer system to zero in on the hacker, surnamed Zhang, at his residence in Shenzhen, southern Guangdong Province, on August 27.

Zhang told police that he bought the hacking software online from a man surnamed Sui. With the software, Zhang hacked into more than 30 popular online shopping websites for customer information, and sold most of it to a man surnamed Yao.

Police then found Sui and Yao at their home in central Hunan and eastern Jiangsu provinces, respectively. Yao told police that he resold the information to a few other buyers on the internet.

After collecting clues from bank transfer information of the cheated customers, police eventually managed to track the two suspects who pretended to be the website service staff. The two were making fraud calls from a hotel room in southern Hainan Province when they were arrested on September 15.

All suspects have been detained as police pursue further investigation.

No details were provided about the amount of money creamed off by the swindlers.

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