The Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States, known as the FBI, has decided to offer a monetary reward of $5,000 / €4,000 for any detail that leads to the arrest of John Gordon Baden, one of the most wanted cyber fugitives of San Diego.
Baden is accused of cable fraud, electronic piracy and distinguished identity theft, offenses that were carried out with two of his accomplices, Jason Ray Bailey and Victor Alejandro Fernandez. The illegal acts of identity theft are believed to have affected approximately 40,000 people, whose money was stolen from stock or bank accounts.
The scammers managed to illegally obtain funds which they spent on purchasing electronic goods, causing financial losses estimated at millions of dollars, according to an FBI statement.
It appears that the illegal activity was carried out from Tijuana, Mexico, exploiting vulnerabilities that exist on the servers of a US mortgage broker. The illegal trio hacked the company's systems and took personal information of its customers related to mortgage loan applications.
Thus, sensitive details were harvested that included names, dates of birth, social security numbers, addresses, assets, tax information, and driver's license numbers, and they belonged to private individuals from California and Florida as well as intermediate states of the United States.
All the criminal activity occurred between July 2011 and August 2013, as the connection and access to the mortgage loan company's systems and the client file management application were possible without any particular licensing or authentication requirement.
Of the three criminals, only Baden managed to evade capture, and it is believed that he is still in Tijuana, in the Zona Centro area or in the Zona Norte.
Source: secnews.gr
