Computer crime (also known as cyber-crime and net crime) according to Moore is any crime made with the involvement of a PC or laptop and a computer network. Hadler & Jaishankar defined it as offence committed towards certain individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally bring harm to the reputation of the victim or in order to cause the harm to a victim physically or mentally in direct or indirect way. In this case, the offender uses modern telecommunication networks such as the Internet (with the help of online chat rooms, emails, notice boards, or online groups) and mobile phones (by SMS or MMS).
According to FBI investigations, billions of dollars are lost annually repairing the damaged system after such attacks. Some computer criminals even disable and collapse the work of entire systems of banks, hospitals, and 911 services, which cause not only huge money losses but can also be very dangerous for people’s lives. The range of cyber criminals is quite broad, starting with computer geeks, who seek for bragging rights, and ending with businesses of all levels, which attempt to obtain priority and leadership in the market place by hiring specialists for hacking the competitors. More serious range includes criminals, whose aim is stealing personal data in order to sell it on the black market, and even spies and terrorists looking to rob the whole nation or launch cyber strikes.
Recently, as it is shown in FBI reports, a new set of technological and investigative capabilities and partnerships is established, which assists in chasing the criminals in cyberspace. In addition, various services are created for combating this threat such as FBI Cyber Intrusion Section, Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters, Mobile Cyber Action Teams, etc. These structures’ most renowned tools are establishing partnership with federal agencies and companies in order to defend users from computer attacks and the assistance in computer intrusion cases provided by Mobile Cyber Action Teams.
Credit card fraud is another kind of so-called “white-collar crime” defined by Brickey as a form of stealing the identity information, which includes the unauthorized taking of another’s credit card information in order to charge purchase to the account or grab funds stored on it. The schemes applied in credit card frauds are mainly divided into two categories: application fraud and account takeover.
Application fraud means illegal opening of the credit card account in another person’s name without this person’s permission and even while the victim does not know that. It happens if the offender is able to obtain important personal information about the randomly or purposefully chosen victim, which would be enough to fill in all the required columns in the application for getting credit card or in case the offender is able to create cogent faked documents. Such scheme is very dangerous since victims usually detect it too late or do not detect it at all to the very end.
Account takeover in its turn means criminal pillage of the credit card account, which already exists for changing the billing address of the account. Subsequently, the criminal reports about the card theft, obtains new one, and makes defrauding purchases using it to pay for them. In addition, the credit card fraud may happen if the unfair business employees unlawfully access to customer’s information about his/her credit card, which is then sold to identity prigs, or just do that themselves. Such scheme is called “skimming.” In general, the range of the criminals committing this type of crime can be just thieves, counterfeiters, crooks, and unfair business employees who have access to the customers’ credit card data. The impact of their activities is large money losses, severe damage to people’s well-being, and profits of the banks together with their reputation.
According to Moore, many banks nowadays create various tools to cope with credit card frauds by launching chip-equipped cards with a PIN code application and PIN-devices, which require entering an individual PIN number instead of writing a signature as it was before. It especially helped in struggle with skimming since only cardholders know the individual PIN numbers, and even bank services have no any access to it.
In addition, many high street banks have introduced two-tier security system for their customers in the Internet. This system works by entering the details of the account by the account owner into a physical device and then entering the unique code sent by the bank website services. Although many bank customers were at first very dissatisfied with such innovation, the report of 2011 proved that thanks to that system, there were almost 1/3 less offences comparing to the previous year when this type of security system did not exist yet. According to the U.K. Cards Association, thanks to providing such anti-fraud measures, the criminals turned back to rather primitive banking with some success, calling customers via phone and pretending to be bank officials who required the account details. The only tool in coping with such kind of fraud is just not to be too trusting and understand that none of bank representatives has the right to ask any details of the customer’s account such as the PIN code, password, and other details, which grant the access to his or her money.
The FBI Press Center informs that during the operation dated by February 5, 2013, eighteen people were charged in international credit card fraud scam, due to which $ 200 million was stolen by creating approximately 25,000 of lime identities. The adventurers were charged in fabricating the identities in order to obtain the credit cards and falsified the credit reports with the aim to increase their borrowing power connected with cards. On February 5, the crimes of 13 out of 18 members of this international criminal fraud enterprise, most of whom were of Arab and Turkish origin, were proved, and they were arrested. These 13 captured crooks lived and worked in 13 locations of four states of the USA such as New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Later, the rest 5 were also caught.
Paul J. Fishman, who is an Attorney of the United States, claims that it is “one of the largest credit card fraud schemes ever charged by the FBI and the Department of Justice”. The fraud type, chosen by this criminal enterprise, increased the costs of doing any type of financial and other business for every resident of the USA, as Fishman commented it. The members of the eliminated Criminal Enterprise, according to the data provided by the FBI in the same report, created a huge network made of about 1,800 so-called “drop addresses” of different real estate such as houses, mailboxes, and apartments used by them as addresses for mailing with mock identities. In addition, several hundreds of non-existing companies were made.
The criminals also used such sophisticated method as Tradelines – the lines of credit in a credit history, which significantly affected the credit user’s score. It allowed the adventurers to borrow even more money from the issuers of the credit cards. A lot of money was wired to China, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, India, Romania, and Japan. However, the lavish spending of the stolen cash assisted in discovering the criminal enterprise. The investigation made by special agents of the FBI Cyber Division based on the records of New York and New Jersey Departments of Labor. The latter indicated that the suspects had only a little job, and the lion’s share of them absolutely had no legitimate employment within last five years, which actually did not prevent them from purchasing luxurious automobiles, enormously expensive property, clothing, and gold.
That fault betrayed the criminal network and actually caused its elimination. All members of the liquidated network received up to 30 years prison sentence and $1 million fine as a punishment. The credit card fraud committed by the described enterprise had a very sophisticated scheme, which included masterly made and elaborated conspiracy, and it is hard to say what could have deterred the members of this criminal enterprise, if ever. The reason of such conclusion is that the criminals who commit such kind of crimes invent the most sophisticated and cunning technologies and plan how to rob someone’s account or make a very convincing lime identity. That is why it is absolutely impossible to predict their actions.
Preventing of such crimes can be achieved by strengthening and improving computer safety systems and by strengthening the control over the Internet activity of people who were once suspected in such type of actions. Moreover, a good variant would be to hire the best of such specialists, who were once captured for frauds with credit cards as specialists in identifying the possible criminals and making the systems, which would protect the databases where the information about the customer’s credit cards is stored. A positive side of this option is that the process of catching individuals will be much more successful since the former criminals who used to do similar crimes have more chances to find the other law violators. Furthermore, most of the criminals being busted but given a good job with decent salary and a chance to mend will not return to the offences. Finally, the simple true is that in order to capture the criminal (especially the skilled one) and to find him, one should think like the former.
If the article was cognitive for you, proceed to read other articles on https://essayswriters.com/. Most of the articles are written by Joanna Webster, one of the best premier essay writers.