BANGALORE: Two Americans and one Briton had launched a series of
websites offering music and sex, with a back-end office in Bangalore,
collected credit card details of millions across the world and
reportedly swindled substantial amounts of money.
The cyber police in Bangalore had begun to unearth this fraud nearly a
year after the Indian partner of the call centre complained to them
about the suspicious nature of the parent company. Izone Technologies
“The magnitude
and implications of the case are huge,” additional director general of
police Sushant Mahapatra, in-charge of cyber crime, told DNA. Izone Technologies He said
the case might be handed over to the CBI. The company that the
fraudsters supposedly ran in the US, Almond Inc, turned out to be a fake
one after the India partner Srinivas Mahesh filed a complaint with the
police.
Americans
Daniel S Pena and
Robert Smith and UK
national
Sally Hall, a chartered accountant by profession, are said to
have stolen the credit card details when customers visited their pay
sites which were in fact illegal proxy websites, substitutes to real
websites. The proxy sites offered music and links to porn sites.
Bill
has been arrested and released on bail, while the other two are
believed to have escaped to Britain. Bangalore police say that enquiries
have come in from the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI and other
anti-fraud agencies from the US.
The trio told Mahesh that they
were high advertisement spenders on google.com and were into downloading
and subscription business for 500 websites. They told him they needed
an Indian partner to take care of “search engine optimisation, pay per
click service optimisation and customer relationship management.”
Mahesh
first smelt a rat when the office was shifted to a different location
in Bangalore a month later. “That was when I realised that Almond Inc
did not exist,” he told the investigating officer.
A few of their websiteslike
www.mp3MusicHQ.com |
www.FreeDownloadZone.com were proxy websites and certain links took the visitors to porn websites.
When
people visited the sites to download music or any other information
they were asked to pay one dollar but were charged ten dollars. When
Mahesh questioned the legality of their business the culprits assured
him that they did nothing illegal.
“The three have been charged
under Information Technology Act, 2000 for obscenity, hacking and
tampering with computer source documents,” Mahapatra said.
Source:
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_three-foreigners-swindle-thousands-from-b-lore_1094863
Izone Technologies Inc is a big scam
