Japan arrests its first phishing scam artist

[bill]

article [asahi.com]
Police on Monday made their first arrest in connection with an Internet phishing scam by nabbing a man who created a Web site nearly identical to the popular Yahoo auction site.

The Osaka man in his 40s was arrested on suspicion of violating the Copyright Law. ...

According to sources close to the investigation, the man designed the Web site to look like Yahoo's in February using computers at home and workplace.

His Web site used a logo owned by Yahoo Japan Corp., but the one big difference was that the man had "Yafoo!" on the logo instead of the real "Yahoo!"

It's somewhat surprising that it has taken them this long to catch one of these people. The authorities in Japan need to step up their cyber crime capabilities as things are only going to get worse in this area. Although I can't find any articles now, I'm sure there have been some crackdowns in China against phishing...most likely hosts. Japan seems a little behind the curve on this one.

[gecko1]

Did anyone actually see the Yafoo website? I was actually surprised it was up for so long. I think there is also one for Google.

[redstorm]

Such things happen every minutes globally. It's a new problem for us.