Scammers sentenced for Microsoft software scheme
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A husband-and-wife team were sentenced to five years in prison for buying Microsoft software at academic discounts and illegally reselling it.
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Scammers are using fake electronic greetings to lure recipients to malicious sites.
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InfoWorld - With Microsoft&#39;s monthly patch release expected on Tuesday, scammers are sending out fake security bulletins that attempt to install malicious software on victim&#39;s computers.
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Scammers are sending out fake security bulletins that attempt to install malicious software on victim's PCs.
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Federal prosecutors have announced the convictions of three Oregon residents, saying they had colluded to buy and resell some $29 million worth of Microsoft software intended for educational institutions to non-academic customers.
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Six will be sentenced this fall in criminal copyright infringement case involving counterfeit software.
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German man sentenced to three years for selling counterfeit Microsoft products.
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(InfoWorld) - Three U.S. men and one man living in France have pleaded guilty to charges related to a stock manipulation scheme that included sending out tens of millions of spam messages to pump up the stock value of 15 companies, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. The four men cost investors more than $20 million in their so-called pump-and-dump scheme, the DOJ said. Michael Saquella, also known as Michael Paloma, 47, of Mesa, Arizona., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria on Aug. 20. Lawrence J. Kaplan, 63, of Scottsdale, Arizona, pleaded guilty on July 25, in Alexandria to similar charges. Henry "Hank" J. Zemla, 38, of Harris Township, Michigan, also pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria on July 20. The three defendants are scheduled to be sentenced between late November and early February. Saquella pleaded guilty to a criminal information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of electronic mail fraud involving 15 publicly traded companies. Kaplan pleaded guilty to a criminal information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud involving 14 of these companies, and Zemla pleaded guilty to a criminal information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud involving one of the companies. The plea agreements for all three defendants were unsealed Thursday. The scheme involved stocks from companies including eDollars, Xtreme Technologies, and PokerBook Gaming. Justin Medlin, 26, of Paris, also pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria on Aug. 20 to a criminal information charging him with one count of electronic mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and electronic mail fraud involving seven of the companies. Medlin's plea agreement was unsealed Thursday. He will be sentenced on Nov. 30. The maximum penalties for each of the fraud charges is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The stock manipulation schemes generally followed a similar pattern, the DOJ said. The defendants generally solicited small, privately held companies that needed to raise money. One of the defendants would offer to help the company raise significant money through the sale of the company's stock, and then the defendants would list the company's shares on the Pink Sheets, a price quotation system primarily used for trading small companies' stocks. The group of defendants would then gain control of a majority of the stock of the company, the DOJ said. The co-conspirators then engaged in deceptive and manipulative trading practices to boost the price and volume of the company's stock, the DOJ said. In some cases, members of the conspiracy encouraged investors to purchase companies' stock by giving the investors free-trading shares in return for buying blocks of shares at agreed-upon prices, thereby creating the illusion of trading volume and active investor interest. In other instances, members of the conspiracy bought and sold shares of the companies' stock between and among themselves to give the appearance of investor interest, the DOJ said. The co-conspirators also falsely manipulated the price and volume of each company's stock by making materially false and misleading statements in news releases and in spam e-mails distributed by Medlin and other spammers to tens of millions of U.S. e-mail addresses, in an effort to create artificial demand for the companies' stock, the DOJ said. In related actions, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against Saquella and Kaplan for their part in the schemes to manipulate the price and volume of the companies' securities. Three other defendants, Steven P. Luscko, Gregory A. Neu, and Brian G. Brunette, have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced in federal court in Alexandria for their roles in related stock manipulation schemes. Luscko and Neu were each sentenced to five years in prison and Brunette was sentenced to one year in prison.
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Regulators are trying to prevent scams caused by software that computer users may not even know is on their PCs.
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Two former Coca-Cola employees were sentenced Wednesday to serve prison terms for conspiring to steal and sell trade secrets to rival Pepsi.
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Two Michigan men were sentenced to serve time in federal prison for conspiring to hack into the IT systems of Lowe's Companies Inc. and stealing customer credit card information.
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Three people accused of scamming Microsoft Corp. by buying sharply discounted software intended for educational institutions and reselling it to nonacademic customers were convicted on conspiracy and fraud charges, federal prosecutors said.
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An Australian man whose international email scam stripped A$5 million ($5.48 million) from his victims has been jailed in a continuing global war against Nigerian internet frauds.
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A Columbia man's computer fraud scheme allegedly involved more than 600 victims worldwide.
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Malware arrives in German spam that claims to contain an update from Microsoft.
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A California man has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison and ordered to pay $5.4 million in restitution for selling pirated software online.
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A Moroccan court on Tuesday jailed two   men for one and two years for unleashing computer worms that   disrupted networks across the United States, court officials   and lawyers said.