Law enforcement officials in the UK and Russia have
cracked down on a major extortion ring accused of prying hundreds
of thousands of dollars from online sports betting
websites.
Three men, ages 21, 22 and 24, were taken into custody in
separate arrests in St. Petersburg and the Saratov and Stavropol
regions of southwest Russia.
The men have not been charged, but are believed to be part of a
ring that uses legions of compromised or "zombie" computers to
launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against online sports
betting shops which refuse to pay protection money, said Felicity
Bull, a spokeswoman for the National Hi-Tech Cime Unit (NHTCU).
In DoS attacks, web servers are flooded with junk data and
network traffic from thousands of machines, preventing them from
responding to legitimate requests.
The NHTCU, a law enforcement agency that investigates UK
computer crime, worked with their counterparts in the Russian
Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), including the MVD's computer
crimes specialist department and Investigative Committee.
The arrests follow a complaint in October 2003, by Canbet Sports
Bookmakers, which was forced to pay protection money to prevent its
website from being attacked.
NHTCU and Russian investigators used traditional investigative
techniques and computer forensics to trace the extortionists back
to Russia and identify them, using information on the source of the
DoS attacks and money transfer records. Authorities arrested 10
members of the online extortion gang in Riga, Latvia in November
2003. Those arrests led to the men in Russia, Bull said.
Money transfer agencies helped the NHTCU track the funds, and
law enforcement agencies in Australia, Canada, Estonia and the US
aided in the investigation.
Authorities believe that organised criminal groups in Russia and
other countries run the extortion ring. However, Bull noted that
the three men arrested have not yet been charged, that the
investigation is continuing and that more arrests are possible.
Russian investigators seized computer equipment from the men, which
may provide further clues about the criminal gang, she said.
Authorities still do not know how much money the group collected
from the bookmakers - although the figure is believed to be in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars - or how many sports books it
extorted, Bull said.
Online sportsbooks use sophisticated web pages to post odds and
collect wagers on a wide range of sporting events. Online sports
wagering is illegal in the US, but legal in the UK and other
countries.
In the last year, online sports books have become frequent
targets of online criminal gangs that are attracted to the
cash-rich virtual betting shops, which often keep between $300m
(£162m) and $400m on hand to cover bets, according to Dave
Matthews, site administrator of Las Vegas Advisor, an online
publication serving the gaming industry.
Demands for protection money vary, but typically range from
$10,000 for small sites to $40,000 or more for larger operations,
said Amran Pena, an information technology consultant who works
with online betting shops to secure their networks.
Many online betting shops that serve the US are based in small
countries such as Costa Rica and Belize, which lack the resources
or expertise to investigate extortion attempts.
If charged, the three men will be tried in Russia. NHTCU also
expect more arrests to follow, Bull said.
"We expect to find more people in the chain. Once you arrest
somebody, you start to find out so much more," she said.
Paul Roberts writes for IDG News Service