Costa Rica News – Well it seems that there are things that are not allowed in Costa Rica when it comes to theft and fraud. The Costa Rican government does not want anyone to outdo them. An alleged gang, composed of 63 people, which stole ¢ 110 million computer fraud, will go on trial in October.
The trial will be conducted by the Criminal Court in San Jose from the 1st of October to the 22nd of December.
Such persons are attributed to 26 offenses of computer fraud and 1 charge of conspiracy.
As reported by the press office of the Judiciary, the group mobilized stole from businesses and individuals through a spyware program that tracked users’ bank accounts and passwords, allowing them to make fraudulent transactions.
It is suspected that four of the accused led the group, one of them is Cuban.
Other people, called “frenteadores” were recruited to provide their bank accounts and make deposits.
The group performed between March and October 2007, and in the months of January, April and May 2008. Some 205 irregular banking transactions affecting 26 people.
The alleged theft, fraudulently, was ¢ 83,955,500 and $ 51,182 (¢ 26,394,557) of bank customers.
The research indicated that the four leaders devised a plan for the fraud by a computer program called keylogger .
This allowed clandestinely capture of computer data of the offended, passwords and user names.
Apparently, the program suspects remitted through email the banking information, which they used to illegally enter the banking pages and remove the funds from the victims.
For this purpose, the conducting banking transactions from various Internet cafes, in order to prevent the IP addresses of the computers to be localized by the authorities.
Resources were transferred to personal accounts of so-called “frenteadores” who were fully aware of the wrongful act and withdrew the money the same day of the transfer, for which they received a commission.
One of the operations for the arrest of the accused was held on December 18, 2007. The police operation was called “Trojan Christmas” and included 14 simultaneous raids in San Jose, Cartago and Alajuela.
At that time it was they arrested 11 suspects, who are attributed 13 cases of computer fraud, which exceeded ¢60 million.
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Fraud and identify theft have also become popular past times. Gangs normally operate with networks of drug addict, with whom, they pay a commission to go out and steal trash and mail. With paperwork, the gangs put together profiles, which they use to apply for credit cards and loans. The OIJ is onto this new model of fraud. However, there are many out there still in operations. You should be careful where you throw your trash out and be on guard is some homeless looking guy is going through it. He might be looking for more than recyclable materials.