Clever Thieving

[Xiphos]

I have admiration for someone with more imagination and intelligence than resorting to sticking a gun in the face of a minimum wage midnight clerk at the Stop-N-Rob. I'm glad he got caught and I hope the money gets returned to the victims. But I admire the clever effort.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...legedly-b.html

Man Allegedly Bilks E-trade, Schwab of $50,000 by Collecting Lots of Free 'Micro-Deposits'
By Kevin Poulsen

A California man has been indicted for an inventive scheme that allegedly siphoned $50,000 from online brokerage houses E-trade and Schwab.com in six months -- a few pennies at a time.

Michael Largent, of Plumas Lake, California, allegedly exploited a loophole in a common procedure both companies follow when a customer links his brokerage account to a bank account for the first time. To verify that the account number and routing information is correct, the brokerages automatically send small "micro-deposits" of between two cents to one dollar to the account, and ask the customer to verify that they've received it.

Largent allegedly used an automated script to open 58,000 online brokerage accounts, linking each of them to a handful of online bank accounts, and accumulating thousands of dollars in micro-deposits.

I know it's only May, but I think the competition for Threat Level's Caper of the Year award is over.

Largent's script allegedly used fake names, addresses and Social Security numbers for the brokerage accounts. Largent allegedly favored cartoon characters for the names, including Johnny Blaze, King of the Hill patriarch Hank Hill, and Rusty Shackelford. That last name is doubly-fake -- it's the alias commonly used by the paranoid exterminator Dale Gribble on King of the Hill.

The banks involved included Capital One, Metabank, Greendot and Skylight. Largent allegedly cashed out by channeling the money into pre-paid debit cards.

A May 7 Secret Service search warrant affidavit (.pdf) says Largent tried the same thing with Google's Checkout service, accumulating $8,225.29 in eight different bank accounts at Bancorp Bank.

When the bank asked Largent about the thousands of small transfers, he told them that he'd read Google's terms of service, and that it didn't prohibit multiple e-mail addresses and accounts. "He stated he needed the money to pay off debts and stated that this was one way to earn money, by setting up multiple accounts having Google submit the two small deposits."

The Google caper is not charged in the indictment. (.pdf)

According to the government, Largent was undone by the USA Patriot Act's requirement that financial firms verify the identity of their customers. Schwab.com was notified in January that more than 5,000 online accounts had been opened with bogus information. When the Secret Service investigated, they found some 11,385 Schwab accounts were opened under the name "Speed Apex" from the same five IP addresses, all of them tracing back to Largent's internet service from AT&T.

Largent is free on bail. He's charged in federal court in Sacramento with four counts each of computer fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud. He didn't return repeated phone calls Tuesday; Representatives of E-trade, Schwab.com and Google also didn't return phone calls.

[Ducky]

wow.

[Five-0]

And he would've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.

[gozling]

kind of reminds me of office space...
lol

[Cool Breeze]

I am Mr. Shackleford's attorney, Rusty Shackleford.

[Kate]

LMAO @ 5-0!

[MissMyCaprice]

So many questions:
Are they charging him with 400000 counts of theft of 7 cents?
What was he earning per hour by the time he did all these bogus accounts?
Is it really theft if they deposit the money voluntarily? I mean, you don't ask for it.
Is Rusty Shackleford going to testify about how his credit was ruined?
Who detected this?
What agency investigated?
If this case crossed my desk, it would not make it past the trash-can.

[Xiphos]

So many questions:
Are they charging him with 400000 counts of theft of 7 cents?
What was he earning per hour by the time he did all these bogus accounts?
Is it really theft if they deposit the money voluntarily? I mean, you don't ask for it.
Is Rusty Shackleford going to testify about how his credit was ruined?
Who detected this?
What agency investigated?
If this case crossed my desk, it would not make it past the trash-can.

I wonder if the only thing he did wrong was lie about his name and social security number? If he used his real info and they deposited it I don't think he would have been doing anything wrong. He fraudulently obtained it though by lying.

[Roses]

There was a movie that is similar to this. I think it was a superman movie if I'm not mistaken. The bad guy in the movie had opened an account for all the pennies from payroll checks.

[Xiphos]

There was a movie that is similar to this. I think it was a superman movie if I'm not mistaken. The bad guy in the movie had opened an account for all the pennies from payroll checks.

I don't remember if it was Superman but I think I remember that. When banks had fractions of a penny he had a computer program that rounded that fraction down and deposited the fraction in his account.

[Five-0]

Two movies had this in it....Superman III and Office Space. For any further useless information needs feel free to look me up.