As part of an investigation into stolen subscription service credentials, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has sentenced a Sydney man to two years and two months
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The 23-year-old is accused of creating and managing online subscription services that relied on stolen credentials of Australians and other users.
The court also ordered him to perform 200 hours of community service.
In March, police searched the defendant's home in Dee Why (a suburb of northern Sydney) and seized a laptop used in the illegal business. Officers also seized cryptocurrencies worth approximately AU$35,000. In total, items worth AU$1.65 million were seized.
The investigation began when in May 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) provided information to Australian police regarding illegal services using stolen credentials.
According to police, this information involved an account creation website called WickedGen.com. WickedGen operated for about two years, selling credentials and account information for online subscription services, including Netflix, Spotify and Hulu.
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AFP also discovered that the Australian was the creator and administrator of three other similar sites: HyperGen, Autoflix and AccountBot.
The stolen account details belonged to Australian users and other users from around the world.
According to police, across all four subscription services, the perpetrator had at least 152,863 registered users and provided at least 85,925 subscriptions for illegal access to legitimate streaming services.
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The man had received at least AU$680,000 via PayPal by selling subscriptions through these websites.
“The collection and sale of personal information online was not a ‘victimless crime’ – people’s personal information and credentials were used for someone else’s benefit,” the AFP commander said.
“These types of offenses can often be a precursor to more insidious forms of data theft and abuse, which can have greater consequences for victims.“.
Source: ZDNet
