Scammers Run A Trucking Company With No Trucks

from the the-magic-of-computers dept

You have to admit that there are some creative scammers out there. Take, for example, a group of Russian immigrants, who used their hacking skills to effectively run a trucking company that didn't exist. They would hack into a Department of Transportation website that listed licensed trucking firms to change the contact info (temporarily) on certain firms to their own address and phone number. Then, they would go to another online site that listed cargo in need of transportation. They'd pose as the firm whose contact info they'd replaced, get the deal, and then go find another trucking firm to actually deliver the cargo. The cargo itself would get delivered, and the scammers would contact the original cargo owners to get paid. Then, the company that actually delivered the cargo would contact the company these scammers pretended to be working for, and discover that it had no clue what they were talking about. Apparently, this scam was effective enough to net the scammers over a half-million dollars. Of course, it wasn't effective enough to keep them from getting arrested.

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