International Phone Hacking Ring Busted; Stole $55 Million Worth of Calls

Authorities in several countries have helped bust an international phone hacking ring that cracked into thousands of corporate phone networks in the U.S. and elsewhere in order to route calls through the networks at the expense of the hacked companies. Three foreign nationals were indicted in the U.S., according to a document unsealed on Friday, for allegedly hacking into the phone systems, while five Pakistani nationals were arrested in Italy for allegedly financing the scheme and selling access to the hacked networks to other call centers and using the hacked networks to route their own customer calls. The ring had been operating for more than four years and had hacked into phone systems belonging to more than 2,500 corporations in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey, which is handling the U.S. case, the ring sold 12 million minutes worth of time on the company networks, valued at more than $55 million in charges. Some of the profits earned from the scheme allegedly helped finance the activities of Islamic fundamentalist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to reports from Italian authorities. And some calls routed illegally through the hacked networks were made to the Middle East and other regions involved in political unrest, suggesting that the hacked networks might have been used by terrorist organizations to thwart eavesdropping and tracking by intelligence agencies. The three foreign nationals indicted in the U.S. are Mahmoud Nusier, 40, Paul Michael Kwan, 27, and Nancy Gomez, 24. All three were arrested in March 2007 in the Philippines, along with four other suspects. The three were indicted in New Jersey, following a years-long FBI investigation into the hacking ring’s activities. Nusier, a Jordanian national, and Kwan and Gomez, both Philippine nationals, were indicted on several counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, unauthorized access to computer systems and possession of unauthorized access devices. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey would not say whether the U.S. had initiated extradition proceedings. The announcement of their indictment coincided with the arrests of the Pakistanis in Italy.

Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/international-phone-hacking-ring-busted-stole-55-million-worth-of-calls/