GhostNet cyber crime forum fraudsters jailed

The UK founder of the infamous GhostMarket.net cyber crime forum has been convicted along with three others of computer offences linked to the running of the largest English language site of its kind ever discovered.

Nicholas Webber, 19, has been jailed for 15 and a half years, after being arrested in October 2009 while trying to pay for a London hotel room with stolen credit card details.

The police subsequently found more than 130,000 compromised credit card numbers on PCs belonging to Webber and co-defendants Ryan Thomas, Gary Paul Kelly and Ricardo Shakira.

At an estimated industry loss of £120 per card, these card details alone represented a potential £15.8m financial loss, said the Metropolitan Police.

GhostMarket.net was set up by Webber to provide an online forum where cyber criminals could trade anonymously in stolen personal and banking information, malware, phishing kits and cyber crime tutorials.

Some 8,000 members are believed to have been involved in the global forum, trading information on tens of thousands of victims, and making it the largest of its kind yet discovered.

Police also discovered that Kelly had built and distributed a Zeus botnet which harvested over four million lines of data, including credit card numbers, infecting 15,000 computers in over 150 countries.

Detective Inspector Colin Wetherill from the Police Central e-Crime Unit, which undertook a complex 11-month investigation, said that the gang were accomplished cyber criminals "engaged in the systematic mass infection of computers in homes and businesses in the UK and overseas".

"They unlawfully harvested personal and financial information from their victims to be exploited for financial gain," he said.

"The arrest, prosecution and conviction of these individuals represents a significant step forward in our efforts to tackle cyber crime and reduce the harm it causes."

A fifth person, Samantha Worley, is currently serving community service for her part in the scheme after being convicted of receiving stolen goods.