The Guardia Civil, in an operation carried out in the provinces of Cadiz, Malaga and Jaen, has disbanded a criminal gang estimated to have stolen 1.5 million euros this year. The bank details of more than 12,000 people in Spain, the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom were recovered.
The operation was started at the beginning of the year when Guardia Civil in Algeciras detected the purchase of large numbers of lottery tickets on the internet with false credit cards. Those buying the tickets made themselves difficult to detect by redirecting their purchases through computers in the U.S.A. and Australia but after several months of investigation the Guardia Civil were able to track them down and searches were made of several homes in Andalucia.
The lottery tickets had been bought with false credit cards made using data obtained through a method known as phishing; e-mailing massive numbers of people with mails pretending to be from banks or other financial institutions and asking for credit card or account information and passwords, often sending users to falsified web pages where they were asked to enter or change passwords or the 'secret questions' used online to confirm users' identities. Once the information was obtained it was used to make online purchases or to bet on the lottery, betting around 1.5 million euros in just five months and netting prizes worth 130,000 euros. Among the things seized during the searches were seven computers, five hard drives, false passports, cds and memory sticks with computer programmes used in the scam, card 'readers' and manuals and instructions for reading the magnetic bands of credit cards and cloning cards. Four arrests were made although the Guardia Civil have not ruled out more arrests being made in the next few days.
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