Fake porn fines hit thousands of Swedes

[Hum]

Thousands of Swedes have been paying faked fines for surfing on porn sites, depositing millions into fraudsters accounts, reported Swedish media on Saturday.

The police suspect people in Sweden, Switzerland and Lichtenstein are responsible for the fraud, reported Swedish national television SVT.

To one of the accounts that the police have traced, at least 1,500 and perhaps as many as 3,000 Swedes have paid the fake fines, thereby earning the suspects millions of kronor.

?Heaps of these fines have been sent out and a lot of people have been paying them,? said the Stockholm police force?s fraud expert Jan Olsson to SVT.

The letters that were sent out to thousands of Swedes at the end of summer stated that the recipient had downloaded pornography and that the action had been traced. In order to avoid charges being pressed, the fake letters stated, the person would have to pay a sum, between a few hundred kronor (100 kronor = $15) and several thousand kronor.

According to the police, few police reports have been filed, and the hidden cases are believed to be numerous.

?Since it says in the letter that you?ve down loaded porn, it becomes very sensitive. It?s not something you want to tell your wife about,? said Olsson to SVT.

His advice to those affected is clear:

?Definitely don?t pay anything. There?s no legal ground for this, and the Anti-Piracy Bureau has warned the public about this, it?s pure fraud.?

source

[Elliott]

I guess they're not really the best at using the Internet. :p

[Detection]

lol, almost the perfect crime, not many people would say anything about it if they knew it to be true

[FMH]

Wow, that hilarious! It's a safe bet that most do. :D

They must've been embarrassed of themselves when paying the fine.

[Hum]

Swedes like sex ? :p

[Jub]

Swedes like sex ? :p

We do!

[cacoe]

This is just wrong.

[Growled Member]

Very ingenious. :D

[demon_speed]

Wich pornosites are they meaning? Well all pornosites are mostly bluff's.. Except for the real porno sites within sweden wich is genuine :), porno can be defined but this is an example > http://www.scandalbe...com/?locale=se .

[Shiranui]

WTF is a porno fine?

[.Neo]

Friend's PC got hit by the Ukash (or whatever) virus. Here it launches a full-screen page with the Dutch police logo and text stating your computer has been locked due to security risks and illegal content/activity such as child pornography under article blabla of the penal code. Then you have link where you can pay for your supposed fine and have your PC unlocked or risk criminal charges. It was filled with broken Dutch sentences and spelling mistakes so even my friend who knows next to nothing about using a computer immediately identified it as a fake.

I restarted the PC in Safe Mode and ran whatever free virus scanner I could find. I got rid of it fairly quickly. The dumbest thing of all was that Microsoft Security Essentials refused to install in Safe Mode, spewing out an error I had to log into Windows the regular way. Which of course would enable the malware to run again rendering everything, including the Task Manager, useless. I would expect something better from Microsoft, since it's their operating system.

EDIT I found a screen shot of the page, although the version on my friend's PC did look a bit more sophisticated. Not much though.

[Shane Nokes]

The dumbest thing of all was that Microsoft Security Essentials refused to install in Safe Mode, spewing out an error I had to log into Windows the regular way. Which of course would enable the malware to run again rendering everything, including the Task Manager, useless. I would expect something better from Microsoft, since it's their operating system.

That's due to some of the system dependencies that are required for the installation. There's actually an offline product you can download for the times you need to scan a system like this.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

[Osiris]

lol what an awesome scam. Tip of the hat to the crims for that one, wag of the finger to those swedes who looked at porn.

Ah I would never have to pay such a fine... :shifty:

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

What I dont get is since when is porn illegal to view? Obviously certain types are illegal but the normal everyday porn surely cant be? Can it?