Corrupt bank worker jailed over Trojan-powered tax scam

A former local business manager at a bank who participated in a £3.2m self assessment tax fraud was jailed for three years and three months on Friday.

Nikola Novakovic, 34, conspired with Oleg Rozputnii, 28, to register over 1,050 fictitious taxpayers on the Income Tax Self Assessment system. The pair claimed fraudulent tax refunds under assumed names before laundering the proceeds of the scam via 200 fraudulent bank accounts.

Personal details needed to pull off the racket were extracted from the computers of consumers using an unspecified computer virus. Rozputnii, an illegal immigrant from the Ukraine, used numerous false identities to help commit the fraud, which also involved Dmytro Shepel, 26, a Ukrainian, also from London.

Joe Rawbone, assistant director of HMRC Criminal Investigation, said: "These men ran an audacious scam stealing millions of pounds. They set up hundreds of false bank accounts using viruses to hack into personal computers to gain information. They used their illegal profits to fund lavish lifestyles, buying performance cars including Porches, Mercedes and Jaguars. HMRC takes tax fraud extremely seriously and we will recover any financial gain from this criminal activity."

The scam netted £3.2m between January 2008 and September 2010 when the racket was uncovered following a lengthy investigation by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

Sentencing, Mr Recorder Singh QC said that Novakovic "had abused his position with the bank" as part of a "sophisticated and orchestrated fraud".

Novakovic and Rozputnii pleaded guilty to cheating the public revenue in March. Rozputnii, the main mover behind the scam, was jailed for three years and nine months on Friday. Shepel was sentenced to three-and-a-half years at an earlier hearing in August 2010.

Pictures of the subjects and their cars can be found in a HMRC statement on the case here. ®

[TheRegister]

73,000 malware strains created daily in 2011

The number of threats in circulation has risen in comparison to last year. In the first three months of 2011, PandaLabs identified an average of 73,000 new malware strains, most of which were Trojans. Moreover, there was a 26 percent increase of new threats compared to the same period last year.



While PandaLabs observed a quarter-over-quarter increase of new malware in 2010, the rise was not nearly as notable as the one experienced over the last several quarters.

Trojans remain the most popular type of threat to computer systems, and now account for 70 percent of all new malware. This is unsurprising considering it can be incredibly lucrative for cybercriminals to commit fraud or steal money from Internet users through the online banking channel.


“The proliferation of online tools that enable non-technical people to create Trojans in minutes and quickly set up illegal business – especially when it can provide access to banking details - is responsible for Trojans’ impressive growth”, said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.

Not all kind of Trojans grow at the same pace. Taking a look further at the subtypes of malware, PandaLabs found that Banker Trojans have decreased, bots have remained steady, and fake anti-virus or rogueware has descreased in popularity. However, the number of “downloaders” has increased significantly.

Downloaders are a subtype of Trojan that, once it has infected a user's computer, connect through the Internet to download additional malware. Hackers often use this method because the downloader is lightweight – only containing a few lines of code - and can go completely unnoticed unlike other Trojans.

[Net-Security]