A crime ring dubbed BogusBazaar has scammed 850,000 people out of tens of millions of dollars via a network of dodgy shopping websites. Victims in Western Europe, Australia, and America were tricked by these sham sites into placing orders for goods that either didn't exist or were cheap knock-offs, and had their credit card details harvested for fraud to boot. The crooks behind the caper bagged roughly $50 million in the past three years from fake online stores spanning 22,500 domains, according to a report by analysts at SRLabs this week.
The fraudsters managed to evade the attention of the law enforcement despite earning millions "The operation of fraudulent webshops is a seemingly small but well-organized crime," Matthias Marx, a security consultant at SRLabs, told The Register . "As each fraud case has a relatively low volume, the fraudsters seem to have managed to evade the attention of the law enforcement authorities despite earning millions." The primary purpose of the fake e-commerce network is to steal credit card data, and BogusBazaar also spoofed payment services like PayPal and Stripe to collect that information.
When the crew isn't harvesting credit cards, it sells fake goods that cost real money. According to the report, most folks who make a purchase on one of the fake stores – usually for discounted luxury items – don't receive anything at all, and the lucky few who do get a delivery are greeted with counterfeit merchandise. The crooks have also been runni.
