(Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Public Domain Photographs, Via Wikimedia Commons)

The crooner Bing Crosby might've been a total dick, but it turns out he was a pretty smart angel investor. Guess the Biebs isn't so special, after all! [New Yorker]

"They became a virtual criminal flash mob, going from machine to machine, drawing as much money as they could, before these accounts were shut down." Don't look now but someone lived out your wildest ATM-related dreams. [The Verge]

If you're going to I/O, keep your eyes peeled for all the sensors tracking air quality, noise levels and lord knows what else. [TechCrunch]

Square's TOS was recently updated to add that you can't sell "firearms, firearm parts or hardware, and ammunition; or... weapons and other devices designed to cause physical injury" using the service. Guess you're gonna have to start bringing duffle bags full of cash to the gun show again. [CNN Money]

Aereo launches in Atlanta June 17. [Aereo]

Mr. Vance

Keeping up with criminals is like keeping up with the Joneses. It often requires making some state-of-the-art purchases. Thus Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is planning on investing $2.4 million in City Council funding into a new High Technology Analysis Unit (HTAU) lab set to launch by the end of next year.

As Speaker Christine Quinn told DNAinfo, it's all about catching up with the bad guys. “In this day and age, we need to be as sophisticated as the criminals are, using every tool we can,” she said, calling the Internet, “the new crime scene of the modern age.” Law & Order: JavaScript?

The lab will be housed inside the DA's office in Lower Manhattan, bringing experts and analysts under one roof to "sort through the terabytes of data." The aim is to uncover evidence of identity theft or sharing child pornography on hard drives or cellphones. Mr. Vance says those types of cybercrimes have doubled in Manhattan over the past five years, leading to a 200 percent spike in the number of computers the DA's office has had to analyze from 2010 to 2011. About 1,000 cellphones are also processed by the office each year.

Vance pointed to several recent schemes, including the discovery of advanced devices installed in ATMs that skim credit card numbers, and online peer-to-peer music-sharing networks, which perps have used to share images of child criminal sexual assaults.

Mr. Vance also pointed out that nowadays, almost every crime has a technological component, from discusses illegal activity online to tracking cellphones to verify a perp's location:

"When your cell phone is on, you essentially leave digital breadcrumbs which show where you’ve been,” explained Vance, who said the signals can be “critical to finding where someone was or wasn’t."

Sort of like the every-company-is-a-tech-company these days adage, only, you know, with felons instead of founders.

(Photo: Macstories.net)

Today Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced sentencing for 16 members of a cybercrime ring based in Brooklyn calling itself "S3." Members of the group admitted to credit card forgery and identity theft that compromised hundreds of bank accounts. Using counterfeit credit cards, they fraudulently purchased Apple products around the country and resold them for profit.

In a press release announcing the sentencing, Mr. Vance called S3 "truly a family affair." 

“The boss, his girlfriend, and at least two of his brothers recruited others – many of them, friends – to act as shoppers at Apple stores around the country using stolen account information. The members of ‘S3’ purposely bought some of the most desirable electronic products on the market because they knew that they would be easy to resell, which is how they made their profit."

See, fanboys, your Apple enthusiasm is fueling a life of crime.

The group's 29-year-old leader Shaheed Bilal, aka "Sha," was sentenced to four-and-a-half to nine years in state prison. His 23-year-old brother Rahim Bilal, who also goes by "Marlo" and "Starlo," had already been sentenced to two to six years. And his 25-year-old brother Ali Bilal, aka "Ackii," had also already been sentenced, in his case one to three years in prison. Shaheed served as a the leader, while Rahim and Ali functioned as "underbosses" and recruited shoppers. All three pled guilty to Grand Larceny in the Second Degree.

Last February, as part of the arrest operation, investigators recovered "three firearms, ammunition, and tools needed to manufacture credit cards." The DA's office also seized $300,000 in cash and bank account holdings. Although all 16 members of S3 have pled guilty, charges against eight of the individuals are still pending.

According to court documents, the crimes in questions took place between June 2008 and December 2010.

 . . . the defendants, who called themselves “S3,” illegally obtained personal identifying information, such as the names and credit card account numbers of identity theft victims. The defendants purchased the stolen information from online data traffickers via web-based portals, stored the credit card information in shared email accounts, and used that information to create counterfeit credit cards.

The defendants then recruited individuals to act as “shoppers,” who entered stores armed with these manufactured cards containing the shoppers’ real names, paired with stolen account information. The shoppers used the counterfeit credit cards to purchase electronic goods from Apple stores, including iPods, MacBooks, iPads, and gift cards. The Apple retail stores that the “S3” criminal organization targeted were located in New York, Florida, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Connecticut, Alabama, Oregon, Indiana, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Once purchased, the goods were then sold for cash at below retail cost to several different individuals in Brooklyn acting as “fences.” In turn, the fences would then resell the illegally obtained goods at a profit.

But their operation gets even more intricate. In May, 2010, Shaheed was actually running S3 from inside Rikers Island. (He was being held on an unrelated charge.)

How did he manage that? A twist on the ole adage about a good woman behind every good man. Shaheed's 25-year-old girlfriend Ophelia Alleyne, aka Philly, assisted him while he was in Rikers. Last year she was sentenced to Grand Larceny in the Second Degree and four to 12 years in prison. But it wasn't until after Shaheed was released from jail that investigators found a new email account--rightbackonit@yahoo.com--that he was using to purchase and share credit card data.

In hindsight, perhaps a less pointed email handle might go over better with the authorities.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that District Attorney Cyrus Vance was responsible for the sentencing. 

(flicker.com/burritoes)

Cybercrime! We’re basically living through the digital equivalent of Prohibition, right? Well, a couple of researchers would like to quash everyone’s mental images of Scarface but with credit-card databases instead of blow.  Having run the numbers, researchers Dinei Florêncio and Cormac Herley took to the New York Times opinion page to trumpet their doubts:

One recent estimate placed annual direct consumer losses at $114 billion worldwide. It turns out, however, that such widely circulated cybercrime estimates are generated using absurdly bad statistical methods, making them wholly unreliable.

Now, they're not denying that cybercrime is a serious problem and, more to the point, a major pain in the ass. It's just not the criminal gold mine it's often portrayed as. In other words: "Cybercrime billionaires are hard to locate because there aren’t any."

So what you're saying is that we shouldn't expect a Michael Mann movie to come out of last year's Sony Playstation breach?

DNSChanger oozed out of Estonia and may have fouled up as many as a half-million computers in the United States. The feds' temporary fix to keep the worm from propagating was to replace infected servers with clean surrogates.

Coordinating with the Estonian authorities who arrested those believed responsible for the worm, the FBI set up what amounted to a Maginot Line of temporary servers that would to give businesses and private individuals affected by DNSChanger time to cleanse infected systems. However, this may not have been enough to save all the afflicted. Cyber security journalist Brian Krebs writes:

Computers still infected with DNSChanger are up against a countdown clock. As part of the DNSChanger botnet takedown, the feds secured a court order to replace the Trojan’s DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers. But those servers are only allowed to operate until March 8, 2012. Unless the court extends that order, any computers still infected with DNSChanger may no longer be able to browse the Web.

[Internet Identity president and CTO Rod] Rasmussen said there are still millions of PCs infected with DNSChanger. "At this rate, a lot of users are going to see their Internet break on March 8."

According to Mr. Krebs, Internet Identity believes DNSChanger infected "half of all Fortune 500 firms, and 27 out of 55 major government entities."

Large network operators unsure as to whether their system is infected can contact the DNS Changer Working Group for assistance here. Private users may be able to ferret out a localized infection by following steps outlined here, at DCWG.org.

[Krebs on Security via RT]

(flickr.com/consumerist)

As police commissioner Ray Kelly said after the bust of an international identity theft ring in October in which more than 100 people were suspected to be involved: "The schemes and the imagination that is developing these days are really mind-boggling." That global scam, in which U.S.-based gangs were skimming credit cards and buying high-end computer equipment, came to light following a two year investigation—"Operation Swiper." So we were momentarily confused when we saw an indictment for an identity fraud ring involving dozens of people. Perhaps it was the same case?

It was unclear based on the details released, so Betabeat called the Attorney's office to ask. Were these identity theft rings the same? Nope, it turns out. New York City has just been experiencing an insane uptick in cybercrime rings, especially those involving identity theft.

The DA's office has been slinging indictments left and right: there have been at least four indictments of criminals involved in identity theft rings in New York City in which the case involved a conspiracy of dozens of defendants since Operation Swiper came to a head just over two months ago.

Most recently, six tellers at three branches of Chase bank are among the 55 indicted Friday in a sophisticated identity theft conspiracy that the NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney's office have been investigating for a year.

The conspiracy involved corrupt insiders at Chase as well as a non-profit Jewish association, a high-end car dealership, and a real estate management company who assisted in stealing identifying information of more than 200 customers, according to the office of District Attorney Cyrus Vance. The information was used to extract money from the customers as well as $2 million from financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase Bank, TD Bank, Citibank, Discover, and American Express.. Schemes  included counterfeiting checks and using credit cards to buy luxury goods which were resold on the black market. Many of the customers were repeatedly victimized, says the DA.

Tellers at Chase used customer information to open new credit cards or change customers' addresses in order to take over existing credit and debit cards, the case alleges. Other conspirators held legitimate bank accounts which were used to launder money and lifted identifying information from donors to the United Jewish Appeal-Federation, customers of the Open Road-Audi of Brooklyn and clients of AKAM Associates Inc.

"No organization or individual is immune to the threat of cybercrime," said District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who has said cybercrime is one of the fastest-growing types of crime; a spokesperson for the DA said the office gets between 200 and 300 new cybercrime cases a month. "From ATM skimmers, to waiters stealing credit card info, to the exploitation of systemic weaknesses in bank systems, we are attacking cybercrime and identity theft head on. [This] indictment reveals another tool of organized identity thieves—insiders who betray their employers and prey on clients."

Meanwhile, a teller at a Chinatown Chase bank was indicted on Dec. 9 for stealing $243,000 and heading to Atlantic City, leaving behind a note apologizing to his boss. Is Chase not paying these guys enough?