U.S. convicts first foreigner of phishingOvidiu-Ionut Nicola-Roman, of Craiova, Romania, was sentenced on March 30 to four years and two months in prison for his role in an international phishing operation. The 23-year old Nicola-Roman was charged as part of a larger phishing indictment that also named six other Romanians, none of whom have been arrested.
Prosecutors said they found 2,600 credit and debit card numbers in e-mail accounts linked to Nicola-Roman, and that he had probably harvested more information. He set up a phishing site to snare customers of People's Bank in October 2005, and also had tools that would have allowed him to phish customers of Wells Fargo, Suntrust, Amazon.com, PayPal and eBay, according to court documents.
According to data supplied to prosecutors by People's Bank, 78 of the 88 People's Bank card numbers that investigators found in Nicola-Roman's possession had been used for fraud. Nicola-Roman was able to take an average of $960 per card number collected, prosecutors said.
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