[midsman]

Hi all, new here but have been reading for a while. There are clearly some clever buggers out there at Bombshock!!

The reason I thought I'd chip my first post in on this subject is that I used to work for a company that was scammed out of nearly £1600 (about $3000) over a 12 month period a couple of years ago using the method below.

He eventually got caught as he was videoed outside a train station using cracked WIFI. By the time he was caught the Police reckoned he had made over £1.1 million (about $2 million) by buying fairly low value electronic equipment and selling it on.

Firstly, he had accessed (cracked) the local councils homing database and had a full list of all empty properties.

Secondly, he had multiple fake ID's which he used to set up multiple Paypal accounts. He made sure that none of the purchases ever exceeded the limit at which Paypal required verification. I think at that time it was about £200.00 ($380) and obvioulsy used multiple Paypal accounts per day.

Thirdly, he would buy laptops from small computer outlets, always minimum spec but with Wi-Fi. Not sure about the US but you can buy a decent WI-Fi enabled laptop for around £200 here, or, beleive it or not, get one FREE if you sign up for 3G services (with fake ID, obviously)

So, here's how he did it

He would go and buy a laptop for cash, giving a fake name and address to the (small) retailer he had bought it from. He would always have a few days beard growth, wear a baseball cap etc just in case of CCTV. Apparently he would go to 5 or 6 different outlets in a day and buy 5 or 6 laptops.

He would then travel to places that had free Wi-FI and order several items from multiple web sites using his multiple faked Pay Pal accounts. He would put the delivery address as one of the empty council houses that he had gotten the address for by hacking the Council database. He would then get rid of the laptop completely (never found out where). Think about it. £200 laptop, £1000 - £2000 worth of goods, it's worth getting rid of it.

He would then break into the empty house or flat (apartment for our American Cousins) 3 or 4 days later. Find all of the couriers "we tried to deliver but couldn't, please collect parcel from.........) and then turn up at the couriers Depot with the "we tried to deliver" note and collect the item. I assume he made sure that items that were delivered at the same time were never sent by the same courier.

He would then sell the item.

Although he ripped my old employer off (who was actually a good guy) I did actually think "clever b*stard" and hade a grudging respect for him. Obviously his mistake was using a place where CCTV was everywhere (they are after the Tube bombings, especially by Rail Stations).

I don't know the ins and outs of how they actually related his car to the crime, but I would imagine a guy sitting in his car using a laptop on CCTV at the exact time an order was placed probably did it.

So, there you go, an almost perfect way to do it as long as you are careful.