An Internet scammer who used e-mail and a fraudulent Web site to steal hundreds of credit card numbers was sentenced to almost four years in jail Tuesday.
Houston, Texas, federal court Judge Vanessa Gilmore sentenced Houston resident Zachary Hill to 46 months in jail for his role in duping consumers into turning over 473 credit card numbers.
The Justice Department said the sentence is “one of, if not the longest” ever handed down against an e-mail scammer, said spokesman Michael Kulstad.
Hill, 20, used a “phishing” scheme to make his e-mail look like it came from America Online, the nation’s largest Internet service provider, or PayPal, the online payment subsidiary of auction giant eBay. The message told victims that their accounts had lapsed and that the companies required their credit card numbers and passwords to restart them.
Read the whole story at E-Commerce Times.
