Credit card thief 'steals' own music on iTunes

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/16/5663081-credit-card-thief-steals-own-music-on-itunes

Stealing credit card numbers online is easy. Some criminals have stolen tens of millions of them. But turning stolen card numbers into cash is more difficult. After all, thieves can't just use the numbers to order things and have them sent to their houses -- they'd be caught quickly. Instead, they must somehow buy merchandise and sell it through a network of accomplices, or find some other, more subtle method.

How about promoting your band and stealing money at the same time?

Lamar Johnson, a teenager in the U.K., pleaded guilty this week to uploading about 20 songs to iTunes and Amazon.com, then buying those songs using stolen credit cards and pocketing the royalties. Johnson, 19, was actually part of a 12-member gang who organized the scam and downloaded about 6,000 songs from 2008-2009, stealing about $750,000. Johnson told a London court he was responsible for about 2,000 of the downloads, according to the BBC.

The scam took advantage of one time-tested credit card thief method -- many consumers don't notice small unauthorized charges on their bills, so it's much easier to steal $1 10,000 times than $10,000 one time. That's even more true at iTunes, where it's common for users to incur a string of small charges on their bills.

On the other hand, the trick is always in the delivery. When Johnson and his cohorts tried to access funds sent to them by Amazon and iTunes, they would have been easily found.

No word on the quality of the 20 songs that were uploaded, or whether anyone else bought the music.

LOL...Idjits