"Phisher sites are a dangerous and fast-growing type of identity theft. Searching for the origins of these hoaxes and providing evidence to law enforcement are part of EarthLink's ongoing effort to put spammers out of business and protect the integrity of the Internet," said Lindsey Wegrzyn, EarthLink's Operations Security Enforcement Advisor. "We applaud the actions of Connecticut's U.S. Attorney's Office in bringing the perpetrators of online fraud to justice."
The charges follow a year-long investigation by EarthLink's abuse team. In May of 2005, EarthLink's abuse team began identifying phisher site e-mails on its network that used a variety of methods including fake "greeting card" e- mails, bogus prize-winning announcements and account cancellation messages to trick consumers into providing credit card numbers and other personal information. EarthLink's abuse team shut down the accounts sending the fraudulent e-mails, and captured evidence about the e-mails' origins for law enforcement.
Phisher site e-mails typically instruct consumers to click on a link to what looks like a real corporate Web site and input personally identifying information. Then the fake or "phisher" Web site tricks consumers and steals their passwords, e-mail addresses, credit card numbers and other personal information. The phisher site spam ring manipulated the practice by generating different types of e-mail messages in order to appeal to users and lure them to the phisher sites.
