A young cybercriminal stole almost half a million dollars!

Without even leaving his room, a resourceful 17-year-old set up a fraudulent company conning people out of money. He created a fake website imitating Love2Shop. The con managed to coax people out of $400,000 in a matter of a few months in 2020!

Via Google Ads the young man sold fake gift cards. About 12,000 people became victims – this is how many data records about credit cards people used to send money were found on his computer during a house search.

The young ‘entrepreneur’ bought cryptocurrency with the money stolen and his investments increased up to $2.5 mln in 1.5 years.

However, the con artist was detected, all his assets confiscated, and he himself sent to rehabilitation due to his young age.

Are you surprised? So are we! Not only by the minor cyber criminal’s resourcefulness and wit, though, but even more so by unreliable cybersecurity systems of companies with major platforms. Experts believe that such giants as PayPal and Google must bear responsibility to users for protecting their platforms against cyberthreats. It is their platforms that the con used to commit a crime.

Google acknowledges a number of problems that have arisen in the recent years in terms of cyber security and is going to allocate more funds in order to enhance it and prevent potential cyber threats in the future.