December 30, 2008 - 10:14am
Al last came the time to change calendars and to get a habit to put “9” instead of eight when writing a date. This year was a hard one, and even the most optimistic ones have noted all the troubles prepared by the world financial system. Virtual economy has also curled up and left deep scars upon the souls of thousands of people. However we should to admit that all those events that accompanied us throughout 2008 have strengthened e-finance industry. Little by little we enter a new epoch, the one where computer becomes our main financial operator and we need to get an experience in e-finances to ensure that our future will be as developed and promising as it possible. Such experience can be obtained due to the events that hit world virtual economy this year. The Ecommerce Journal has chosen 10 most memorable and much publicized cases of 2008.
1. eBay changes to its feedback rules and fee structure
In the beginning of this year eBay online auction has introduces some changes to its feedback rules and fee structure.
On January 29, 2008 eBay has announced that it was lowering fees for listing items, raising minimum selling standards, and offering its best sellers incentives and discounts for the first time in its history. It was the first decision of John Donahoe who was just to replace Meg Whitman. The company’s press release stated that starting Feb. 20 in the U.S., eBay was reducing its fees to list items (called "Insertion" fees) by 25 to 50 percent.
eBay also has changed its feedback system so that sellers cannot give a negative or neutral rating to buyers.
Such decision was immediately responded by the seller who thought that it was profitable only for big companies but not the small merchants. "Sellers will no longer have a way to protect themselves against bad buyers, deadbeat bidders, scam artists, buyers who make unreasonable demands, buyers who don't read the ad then demand a refund, the list goes on and on," said one of the sellers in a forum.
On February 18, 2008 started their week-long strike that ended on February 25, 2008. On May 1, 2008 another strike started. However, eBay didn’t change its new policy.
4. E-Bullion slaps a door
E-Bullion payment system was launched by James Fayed on July 4, 2001. Being much alike e-gold payment system e-Bullion allows for the instant transfer of gold and silver between user accounts. E-Bullion system was the first digital gold system that has issued its own debit card linked to an account. Also it was the first one to use CRYPTOCard technology to physically protect user accounts. Among other features it is necessary to note that e-Bullion provided its own in-house currency exchange service and allowed direct funding from bank accounts.
The business of e-Bullion was going well until Monday July 28, 2008 when the wife of James Fayed, Pamela Fayed was stabbed to death in a parking structure at 1875 E. Century Park in Century City, California. Despite the fact that the doctors came almost immediately the woman died the same day. In a week on Monday August 04, 2008 Jim Fayed was arrested. Firstly he was incriminated in money laundering and conducting unlicensed money transactions via E-Bullion. Later he was charged with the murder of his wife. It is necessary to say that the couple was divorcing and had some difficulties with the division of property. Prosecutors based their charges on the credit card found in Fayed’s wallet which was used to rent a car for the murderer.
The next day, August 5, 2008 the site of e-Bullion went down with a note about some routine maintenance for 5 hours. However those several hours lasted till November when the admins have removed the notice. Now one can see just a blank screen.
Being in prison James Fayed has appealed the judge to release the frozen accounts and to pay the account holders however his application was dismissed. At the moment all the accounts are frozen and not a single user can reach his or her money.
5. Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial-services firm that did business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales, research and trading, investment management, private equity, and private banking.
The company’s history goes back to 1950 when three Lehman brothers have founded a dry-goods store that later begin dealing with cotton and in 1870 helped to found New York Cotton Exchange, then became a member of the Coffee Exchange as early as 1883 and finally the New York Stock Exchange in 1887. It seemed that this company would work forever however Man proposes but God disposes.
The first troubles of the company that has successfully recovered after September 11 terrorist attacks. Lehman occupied three floors of One World Trade Center where one employee was killed. Its global headquarters in Three World Financial Center were severely damaged and rendered unusable by falling debris, displacing over 6,500 employees. In August 2007 due to mortgage crisis Lehman Brothers closed subprime lender, BNC Mortgage, , eliminated 1,200 positions in 23 locations, and took an after-tax charge of $25 million and a $27 million reduction in goodwill. However it was too late: huge losses accrued in lower-rated mortgage-backed securities throughout 2008. In the second fiscal quarter, Lehman reported losses of $2.8 billion and was forced to sell off $6 billion in assets.
On September 15, 2008 Lehman Brothers Holdings announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection citing bank debt of $613 billion, $155 billion in bond debt, and assets worth $639 billion.
6. Shut down of Estdomains
Estdomains, which owned hosting service called ESThost as well, was the 49th largest domain name registrar with over 270,000 domains, according to RegistrarStats.com.
On September 21, 2008 the users of EstHost found the service down. First the online support was telling that it was a temporary shut down however later everything became known. EstDomains was cut off due to its connection to the sites distributing porn, spam, malware, illegal pharma and etc.
And here again Brian Krebs from Washington Posts unclosed community’s eyes and told the truth about the spam registrar.
Despite generally known information that EstDomains was registered in Delaware, it was founded in Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia. The founder and CEO of EstDomains, 27-year-old Vladimir Tsastsin was recently sentenced to three years in an Estonian prison after being found guilty of credit card fraud, document forgery, and money laundering.
During several years EstDomains was a registrar of Russian Business Network which was connected with child pornography and financial fraud Web sites. “You could hardly look up malicious Web site hosting nasties like CoolWebSearch and other spyware programs without finding records that traced back to EstDomains,” says Brian Krebs.
On 7 November 2008, EstDomains was informed that, based on ICANN's findings, ICANN was proceeding with the termination of EstDomains' RAA, effective 24 November 2008.
ICANN's records indicate that EstDomains manages approximately 281,000 domain names. To protect the interests of registrants, on 28 October 2008, ICANN published a Request for Informations seeking expressions of interest from registrars to receive a bulk transfer of the domain names managed by de-accredited registrar EstDomains.
7. A farewell to AlterGold!
Launch of this “payment processor” was one of the most ambitious one. Numerous colorful banners, posts and promising advertisement and expressive posters were assuring the whole Internet society that AlterGold was the best payment system that have ever been created. However, our journal has keeping warning the readers about the troubles it could cause being a fake processor. Reporters of the ECJ have made a photo report proving that the company had neither official office nor a license to run its activity.
The beginning of AlterGold was very great indeed. The system offered various bonuses, referral interest, and even Dell Laptop to attract the users. That time many payment processors such as Liberty Reserve, Pecunix, V-money were suffering from continuous DDoS attacks that troubled and irritated the users. So, launch of an “excellent” payment gateway with the super protection and up-to-date features pleased everyone. Being tired with the problems with other payment processors they rushed to new processor that very soon became a real payment tool in investment industry.
Though it happened that DDoS protection of AG was not a superb one and system also was down for several days. Later people started complaining of the plastic cards that were sent to them by the system that appeared to be used. Also it was found that the system charges the use of account in its system.
The first signs of trouble and soon “happy end” took place in early September 2008 when system has sent a message to all its users where it told about the suspension of exchangers’ activity till October 01, 2008. By the end of September the site of Altergold was put under maintenance. As soon as it returned users found that company has removed its official blog and the login panel as well. It other words, AG has blocked all the accounts and money in them. Later the site of the company became unavailable.
1. eBay changes to its feedback rules and fee structure
In the beginning of this year eBay online auction has introduces some changes to its feedback rules and fee structure. On January 29, 2008 eBay has announced that it was lowering fees for listing items, raising minimum selling standards, and offering its best sellers incentives and discounts for the first time in its history. It was the first decision of John Donahoe who was just to replace Meg Whitman. The company’s press release stated that starting Feb. 20 in the U.S., eBay was reducing its fees to list items (called "Insertion" fees) by 25 to 50 percent.
eBay also has changed its feedback system so that sellers cannot give a negative or neutral rating to buyers.
Such decision was immediately responded by the seller who thought that it was profitable only for big companies but not the small merchants. "Sellers will no longer have a way to protect themselves against bad buyers, deadbeat bidders, scam artists, buyers who make unreasonable demands, buyers who don't read the ad then demand a refund, the list goes on and on," said one of the sellers in a forum.
On February 18, 2008 started their week-long strike that ended on February 25, 2008. On May 1, 2008 another strike started. However, eBay didn’t change its new policy.
2. E-Gold leaders pleaded guilty
On July 21, 2008 the Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich for the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey A. Taylor have announced that three principal directors and owners of e-gold payment system pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
The trial has begun on October 26, 2007. At sentencing, E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve face a maximum fine of $3.7 million. Douglas Jackson faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a fine of $500,000 on the conspiracy to engage in money laundering charge, and a sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000 on the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business charge. Downey and Reid Jackson each face a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $25,000. Additionally, as part of the plea, E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve have agreed to forfeiture in the amount of $1.75 million in the form of a money judgment for which they are joint and severally liable. Sentencing for all defendants has been set for Nov. 20, 2008.
However, on November 20, 2008 the federal judge decided not to impose a prison sentence on the senior directors of E-Gold. Instead each of them was sentenced to three years of probation and 300 hours of community service with some fees to be paid. According to the official statement CEO of e-gold Douglas Jackson was sentenced to pay only $200 fine with the above mentioned time of supervision. Reid Jackson, Douglas Jackson's brother, and E-Gold director Barry Downey were each sentenced to three years of probation, 300 hours of community and ordered to pay a $2,500 fine and a $100 assessment fee each. A maximum fine E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve faced could have been $3.7 million, but because neither company could pay that much, they were fined $300,000 with the condition that $10,000 be paid on November 24, 2008, with further monthly payments to start in May 2009. An interesting moment here. Despite admission of guilt Barry Downey has got permission from the D.C. Court of Appeals to continue practicing law though in most cases, lawyers who are convicted of a felony automatically have their licenses suspended until disciplinary proceedings are finalized.
After July events e-gold changed greatly. The system management has changed its policies and restricted system rules. At the moment new account creation is suspended. All the users have to provide their ID documents to get access to their funds. All the countries are divided into the categories that differ from each other by the amounts allowed to spend.
e-gold has introduced new software to secure the transactions and system use however the most users complain of system bugs and troubles with processing.
On July 21, 2008 the Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich for the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey A. Taylor have announced that three principal directors and owners of e-gold payment system pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. The trial has begun on October 26, 2007. At sentencing, E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve face a maximum fine of $3.7 million. Douglas Jackson faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a fine of $500,000 on the conspiracy to engage in money laundering charge, and a sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000 on the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business charge. Downey and Reid Jackson each face a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $25,000. Additionally, as part of the plea, E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve have agreed to forfeiture in the amount of $1.75 million in the form of a money judgment for which they are joint and severally liable. Sentencing for all defendants has been set for Nov. 20, 2008.
However, on November 20, 2008 the federal judge decided not to impose a prison sentence on the senior directors of E-Gold. Instead each of them was sentenced to three years of probation and 300 hours of community service with some fees to be paid. According to the official statement CEO of e-gold Douglas Jackson was sentenced to pay only $200 fine with the above mentioned time of supervision. Reid Jackson, Douglas Jackson's brother, and E-Gold director Barry Downey were each sentenced to three years of probation, 300 hours of community and ordered to pay a $2,500 fine and a $100 assessment fee each. A maximum fine E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve faced could have been $3.7 million, but because neither company could pay that much, they were fined $300,000 with the condition that $10,000 be paid on November 24, 2008, with further monthly payments to start in May 2009. An interesting moment here. Despite admission of guilt Barry Downey has got permission from the D.C. Court of Appeals to continue practicing law though in most cases, lawyers who are convicted of a felony automatically have their licenses suspended until disciplinary proceedings are finalized.
After July events e-gold changed greatly. The system management has changed its policies and restricted system rules. At the moment new account creation is suspended. All the users have to provide their ID documents to get access to their funds. All the countries are divided into the categories that differ from each other by the amounts allowed to spend.
e-gold has introduced new software to secure the transactions and system use however the most users complain of system bugs and troubles with processing.
3. New exchange rules of WebMoney
On July 23, 2008 WebMoney Transfer payment system has shocked the whole world with the announcement restricting online exchange services from exchanging webmoney digital units to other e-currencies. The only explanation of the system was that all those measures were taken to ban and exclude WebMoney Transfer System from attempts of illegal usage and fraud as well as to avoid causing of any potential damages to its users.
Supporting this idea WebMoney system changed its policies and moved some amendments to Agreement on Property Rights Transfer by Means Of Digital Units. So now clause 25 of Annex II (List of Prohibited and Restricted Goods and Services, forbidden for sale using WebMoney Title Units) now sounds as follows:
"Financial or payment instruments, that do not ensure proper KYC procedures and customers identification for the purposes of fighting illicit trafficking, financial fraud, illegal proceeds and money laundering." All the changes entered into force on August 01, 2008. The exchange services that didn’t provided their KYC and user's identification were blocked.
In addition to those amendments WebMoney Transfer has listed the other online payment services that were strictly and undoubtedly prohibited from usage/purchase/selling by/from/to WebMoney Transfer System. The list included the following e-currencies of payment gateways: E-gold.com; Liberty Reserve; E-bullion; Pecunix; Goldmoney; Inocard; Icqmoney; Deltakey; Imoney UAH.
According to the company statements the system is not going to cancel the changes.
On July 23, 2008 WebMoney Transfer payment system has shocked the whole world with the announcement restricting online exchange services from exchanging webmoney digital units to other e-currencies. The only explanation of the system was that all those measures were taken to ban and exclude WebMoney Transfer System from attempts of illegal usage and fraud as well as to avoid causing of any potential damages to its users. Supporting this idea WebMoney system changed its policies and moved some amendments to Agreement on Property Rights Transfer by Means Of Digital Units. So now clause 25 of Annex II (List of Prohibited and Restricted Goods and Services, forbidden for sale using WebMoney Title Units) now sounds as follows:
"Financial or payment instruments, that do not ensure proper KYC procedures and customers identification for the purposes of fighting illicit trafficking, financial fraud, illegal proceeds and money laundering." All the changes entered into force on August 01, 2008. The exchange services that didn’t provided their KYC and user's identification were blocked.
In addition to those amendments WebMoney Transfer has listed the other online payment services that were strictly and undoubtedly prohibited from usage/purchase/selling by/from/to WebMoney Transfer System. The list included the following e-currencies of payment gateways: E-gold.com; Liberty Reserve; E-bullion; Pecunix; Goldmoney; Inocard; Icqmoney; Deltakey; Imoney UAH.
According to the company statements the system is not going to cancel the changes.
E-Bullion payment system was launched by James Fayed on July 4, 2001. Being much alike e-gold payment system e-Bullion allows for the instant transfer of gold and silver between user accounts. E-Bullion system was the first digital gold system that has issued its own debit card linked to an account. Also it was the first one to use CRYPTOCard technology to physically protect user accounts. Among other features it is necessary to note that e-Bullion provided its own in-house currency exchange service and allowed direct funding from bank accounts. The business of e-Bullion was going well until Monday July 28, 2008 when the wife of James Fayed, Pamela Fayed was stabbed to death in a parking structure at 1875 E. Century Park in Century City, California. Despite the fact that the doctors came almost immediately the woman died the same day. In a week on Monday August 04, 2008 Jim Fayed was arrested. Firstly he was incriminated in money laundering and conducting unlicensed money transactions via E-Bullion. Later he was charged with the murder of his wife. It is necessary to say that the couple was divorcing and had some difficulties with the division of property. Prosecutors based their charges on the credit card found in Fayed’s wallet which was used to rent a car for the murderer.
The next day, August 5, 2008 the site of e-Bullion went down with a note about some routine maintenance for 5 hours. However those several hours lasted till November when the admins have removed the notice. Now one can see just a blank screen.
Being in prison James Fayed has appealed the judge to release the frozen accounts and to pay the account holders however his application was dismissed. At the moment all the accounts are frozen and not a single user can reach his or her money.
5. Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial-services firm that did business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales, research and trading, investment management, private equity, and private banking. The company’s history goes back to 1950 when three Lehman brothers have founded a dry-goods store that later begin dealing with cotton and in 1870 helped to found New York Cotton Exchange, then became a member of the Coffee Exchange as early as 1883 and finally the New York Stock Exchange in 1887. It seemed that this company would work forever however Man proposes but God disposes.
The first troubles of the company that has successfully recovered after September 11 terrorist attacks. Lehman occupied three floors of One World Trade Center where one employee was killed. Its global headquarters in Three World Financial Center were severely damaged and rendered unusable by falling debris, displacing over 6,500 employees. In August 2007 due to mortgage crisis Lehman Brothers closed subprime lender, BNC Mortgage, , eliminated 1,200 positions in 23 locations, and took an after-tax charge of $25 million and a $27 million reduction in goodwill. However it was too late: huge losses accrued in lower-rated mortgage-backed securities throughout 2008. In the second fiscal quarter, Lehman reported losses of $2.8 billion and was forced to sell off $6 billion in assets.
On September 15, 2008 Lehman Brothers Holdings announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection citing bank debt of $613 billion, $155 billion in bond debt, and assets worth $639 billion.
6. Shut down of Estdomains
Estdomains, which owned hosting service called ESThost as well, was the 49th largest domain name registrar with over 270,000 domains, according to RegistrarStats.com. On September 21, 2008 the users of EstHost found the service down. First the online support was telling that it was a temporary shut down however later everything became known. EstDomains was cut off due to its connection to the sites distributing porn, spam, malware, illegal pharma and etc.
And here again Brian Krebs from Washington Posts unclosed community’s eyes and told the truth about the spam registrar.
Despite generally known information that EstDomains was registered in Delaware, it was founded in Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia. The founder and CEO of EstDomains, 27-year-old Vladimir Tsastsin was recently sentenced to three years in an Estonian prison after being found guilty of credit card fraud, document forgery, and money laundering.
During several years EstDomains was a registrar of Russian Business Network which was connected with child pornography and financial fraud Web sites. “You could hardly look up malicious Web site hosting nasties like CoolWebSearch and other spyware programs without finding records that traced back to EstDomains,” says Brian Krebs.
On 7 November 2008, EstDomains was informed that, based on ICANN's findings, ICANN was proceeding with the termination of EstDomains' RAA, effective 24 November 2008.
ICANN's records indicate that EstDomains manages approximately 281,000 domain names. To protect the interests of registrants, on 28 October 2008, ICANN published a Request for Informations seeking expressions of interest from registrars to receive a bulk transfer of the domain names managed by de-accredited registrar EstDomains.
7. A farewell to AlterGold!
Launch of this “payment processor” was one of the most ambitious one. Numerous colorful banners, posts and promising advertisement and expressive posters were assuring the whole Internet society that AlterGold was the best payment system that have ever been created. However, our journal has keeping warning the readers about the troubles it could cause being a fake processor. Reporters of the ECJ have made a photo report proving that the company had neither official office nor a license to run its activity. The beginning of AlterGold was very great indeed. The system offered various bonuses, referral interest, and even Dell Laptop to attract the users. That time many payment processors such as Liberty Reserve, Pecunix, V-money were suffering from continuous DDoS attacks that troubled and irritated the users. So, launch of an “excellent” payment gateway with the super protection and up-to-date features pleased everyone. Being tired with the problems with other payment processors they rushed to new processor that very soon became a real payment tool in investment industry.
Though it happened that DDoS protection of AG was not a superb one and system also was down for several days. Later people started complaining of the plastic cards that were sent to them by the system that appeared to be used. Also it was found that the system charges the use of account in its system.
The first signs of trouble and soon “happy end” took place in early September 2008 when system has sent a message to all its users where it told about the suspension of exchangers’ activity till October 01, 2008. By the end of September the site of Altergold was put under maintenance. As soon as it returned users found that company has removed its official blog and the login panel as well. It other words, AG has blocked all the accounts and money in them. Later the site of the company became unavailable.
8. Come back of NETeller
Among other news the news about come back of Neteller payment processor cheerfulizes all users of e-payment system.
Everything started in far 1997 when the notorious UIGEA has been introduced to Senate and a war against online gambling started. That time Neteller was one of the biggest payment processors with over 3 million customers in 160 countries with over $7 billion in annual transactions. And it was widely used as a primary payment option in all kinds of online casinos. In January 2007 the US government has issued warrants on ex-founders of Neteller Stephen Lawrence and Jon Lefebvre, both of them were charged in relation to the creation and operating of Internet payment services company that facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars of illegal gambling proceeds from US citizens to the owners of overseas internet gambling companies and web sites.
In long-lasting negotiations Neteller agreed to pay a "whopping" US $136 million settlement and to stay out of the US market. Later online e-cash processor sold to Leben Investment Corporation its principal property in Calgary, Canada. $ 57.7 million was seized by US authorities, stated Neteller. As a part arrangement with authorities Neteller developed and implemented a distribution plan to return in about $94 million in funds owed to US customers with around $81 million being already disbursed that provoked an intense agitation in the forums and blogs relate to online gaming industry. January 16, 2008 the Isle of Man-based firm had to make its final payment $38.25 million.
In October 2008 Neteller has announced company rebranding to NEOVIA which was approved by the shareholders of the company. The company has made several contracts and has consolidated its on the world e-payment market. In November Neteller has launched its Net+™ Virtual Prepaid Card by MasterCard®. Later it has acquired IDT Corporation’s European Prepaid Payment Services Division and certain other assets which together provide prepaid MasterCard® products in the UK market under the IDT “Prime Card” brand.
And finally in December 2008 Dermot Desmond, a known billionaire investor has invested €20m in Neovia that now has become the world's largest independent online money transfer business.
Among other news the news about come back of Neteller payment processor cheerfulizes all users of e-payment system. Everything started in far 1997 when the notorious UIGEA has been introduced to Senate and a war against online gambling started. That time Neteller was one of the biggest payment processors with over 3 million customers in 160 countries with over $7 billion in annual transactions. And it was widely used as a primary payment option in all kinds of online casinos. In January 2007 the US government has issued warrants on ex-founders of Neteller Stephen Lawrence and Jon Lefebvre, both of them were charged in relation to the creation and operating of Internet payment services company that facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars of illegal gambling proceeds from US citizens to the owners of overseas internet gambling companies and web sites.
In long-lasting negotiations Neteller agreed to pay a "whopping" US $136 million settlement and to stay out of the US market. Later online e-cash processor sold to Leben Investment Corporation its principal property in Calgary, Canada. $ 57.7 million was seized by US authorities, stated Neteller. As a part arrangement with authorities Neteller developed and implemented a distribution plan to return in about $94 million in funds owed to US customers with around $81 million being already disbursed that provoked an intense agitation in the forums and blogs relate to online gaming industry. January 16, 2008 the Isle of Man-based firm had to make its final payment $38.25 million.
In October 2008 Neteller has announced company rebranding to NEOVIA which was approved by the shareholders of the company. The company has made several contracts and has consolidated its on the world e-payment market. In November Neteller has launched its Net+™ Virtual Prepaid Card by MasterCard®. Later it has acquired IDT Corporation’s European Prepaid Payment Services Division and certain other assets which together provide prepaid MasterCard® products in the UK market under the IDT “Prime Card” brand.
And finally in December 2008 Dermot Desmond, a known billionaire investor has invested €20m in Neovia that now has become the world's largest independent online money transfer business.
9. McColo , a source of spam, porn and malware
In November owing to the efforts of Brian Krebs, reporter of Washington Post and Internet security researchers the world has got rid of one of the Internet Service Providers called McColo that helped cybercriminals dealing with spam, botnets, pornography and malware distribution. So, one of the reports of RSA security company contains the information that the known Sinowal Trojan virus have been originated from a McColo IP address. This virus caused the theft of approximately 500,000 online bank account and credit and debit card numbers.
According to the statistics McColo internet service provider has been sending 32.8 messages per second. The experts from SecureWorks said that such known botnets as Mega-D, Srizbi, Pushdo, Rustock and Warezov have their master servers hosted at McColo. The specialists say that the sole Mega-D botnet is capable of sending 10 billion e-mail messages each day.
After the shut down of McColo the level of world spam has been dropped by 75%, reported such known companies as MessageLabs, McAfee, Symantec, and Arbor Networks. The similar situation has taken place when another IPS called Intercage was shut down. However, in both cases the spam level came to its usual mark already in a week.
In November owing to the efforts of Brian Krebs, reporter of Washington Post and Internet security researchers the world has got rid of one of the Internet Service Providers called McColo that helped cybercriminals dealing with spam, botnets, pornography and malware distribution. So, one of the reports of RSA security company contains the information that the known Sinowal Trojan virus have been originated from a McColo IP address. This virus caused the theft of approximately 500,000 online bank account and credit and debit card numbers.According to the statistics McColo internet service provider has been sending 32.8 messages per second. The experts from SecureWorks said that such known botnets as Mega-D, Srizbi, Pushdo, Rustock and Warezov have their master servers hosted at McColo. The specialists say that the sole Mega-D botnet is capable of sending 10 billion e-mail messages each day.
After the shut down of McColo the level of world spam has been dropped by 75%, reported such known companies as MessageLabs, McAfee, Symantec, and Arbor Networks. The similar situation has taken place when another IPS called Intercage was shut down. However, in both cases the spam level came to its usual mark already in a week.
10. Crash of Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme
The fraud initiated by the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market has shocked the whole world. The analysts say that it was the greatest fraud in the history. Madoff's alleged fraud may be valued at a loss of up to a US$50 billion in cash and securities, say the reputable analysts.
On December 11, 2008, at 8.30 a.m. FBI agents arrested Madoff on a tip-off from his sons, Andrew and Mark, and charged him with one count of securities fraud. On the day prior to his arrest, Madoff told his senior executives at the firm that the management and advisory segment of the business was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme."
Among the victims of Madoff are such the largest world financial institutions. So, according to the reports the losses were the following:
Fairfield Greenwich Advisors - $7.50 billion
Tremont Capital Management - $3.30 billion
Banco Santander - $2.87 billion
Bank Medici - $2.10 billion
Ascot Partners - $1.80 billion
Access International Advisors - $1.40 billion
Fortis - $1.35 billion
Union Bancaire Privée - $1.00 billion
HSBC - $1.00 billion
The total amount lost with those giants is $22.32 billion.
Bernard Madoff was let out on $10m bail and placed under house arrest. Some sources said that Madoff had to sign over his New York apartment and his houses in Long Island and Palm Beach, Florida to pay the bail. Now he has an electronic tag and is controlled by the authorities.
Without knowing history and learning a lesson from it humanity could have some development problems. For that reason we ask you, our dear readers to analyze all the events mentioned above, to understand their reasons and the results. This will help you in coming 2009 and in future which we would like to build together with you!
The fraud initiated by the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market has shocked the whole world. The analysts say that it was the greatest fraud in the history. Madoff's alleged fraud may be valued at a loss of up to a US$50 billion in cash and securities, say the reputable analysts. On December 11, 2008, at 8.30 a.m. FBI agents arrested Madoff on a tip-off from his sons, Andrew and Mark, and charged him with one count of securities fraud. On the day prior to his arrest, Madoff told his senior executives at the firm that the management and advisory segment of the business was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme."
Among the victims of Madoff are such the largest world financial institutions. So, according to the reports the losses were the following:
Fairfield Greenwich Advisors - $7.50 billion
Tremont Capital Management - $3.30 billion
Banco Santander - $2.87 billion
Bank Medici - $2.10 billion
Ascot Partners - $1.80 billion
Access International Advisors - $1.40 billion
Fortis - $1.35 billion
Union Bancaire Privée - $1.00 billion
HSBC - $1.00 billion
The total amount lost with those giants is $22.32 billion.
Bernard Madoff was let out on $10m bail and placed under house arrest. Some sources said that Madoff had to sign over his New York apartment and his houses in Long Island and Palm Beach, Florida to pay the bail. Now he has an electronic tag and is controlled by the authorities.
Without knowing history and learning a lesson from it humanity could have some development problems. For that reason we ask you, our dear readers to analyze all the events mentioned above, to understand their reasons and the results. This will help you in coming 2009 and in future which we would like to build together with you!
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