A Connecticut man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly masterminding a phishing scheme in which he and five others scammed AOL users out of hundreds of thousands of dollars over four years.
Michael Dolan, 24, of West Haven, CT, and North Miami Beach, FL, was sentenced in federal court in Connecticut last week to seven years in prison—the maximum allowed. He pleaded guilty last year to fraud and aggravated identity theft.
All of the defendants have pleaded guilty, according to the Department of Justice.
One man, Keith Riedel, was reportedly scheduled to be sentenced last Thursday, but as of deadline Friday, the Connecticut office of the Justice Department had no further information.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, from 2002 through 2006, Dolan conspired with five others to get names, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Social Security account numbers, and other private personal and financial information through an e-mail spamming and phishing scheme—an attempt to scam people into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft—that targeted AOL subscribers.
Dolan and others used software to collect AOL account names from chat rooms and spam those accounts with scam e-mails, including messages purporting to be electronic greeting cards from Hallmark.com, officials alleged.
AOL subscribers who attempted to open the purported greeting cards would unwittingly download a software program that would prevent the subscriber from accessing AOL without first entering information including their name, credit card number, bank account number, and Social Security account number, the Department of Justice alleged.
Dolan and others would use the information to order products online, and to produce counterfeit debit cards, which were used at ATM machines, retail outlets and gas stations, according to Justice officials.
