Second Phisher in Scam Ring Walks

A second man sentenced for taking part in a phishing ring that allegedly scammed AOL users out of hundreds of thousands of dollars will not do any more prison time than he has already served for his role in the scheme, this newsletter has learned.

Keith Riedel, 21, of Winter Haven, FL, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Alvin Thompson in a Hartford, CT court to time already served, followed by three years of supervised release and nine months of home confinement, for his alleged participation in the phishing conspiracy, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Riedel pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Riedel spent five months in prison from October 2006 to March 2007 and an unspecified amount of time in state custody for drug rehabilitation, according to Department of Justice spokesman Thomas Carson.

Riedel’s relatively light sentence comes on the heels of his phishing group’s alleged ringleader, 24-year-old Michael Dolan of West Haven CT and North Miami Beach, FL, drawing a maximum sentence of seven years.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, from 2002 through 2006, Dolan, Riedel and four others conspired 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, Riedel 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, according to officials.

Dolan, Riedel and the 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 officials.

Dolan in 2004 was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty in the Eastern District of New York to one misdemeanor count of accessing a protected computer without authorization. But in 2006, Judge Thompson revoked Dolan’s probation after he allegedly violated its terms.

Later, Dolan convinced his girlfriend to perjure herself to a federal grand jury, attempted to bribe a co-defendant, and threatened to kill someone he believed to be a government informant, according to officials.

Another defendant in the case, Daniel Mascia, is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 10. Three others, Charlie Blount, Jr., Richard D’Andrea, and Thomas Taylor, Jr., are scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 31.