US Officials Finally Going After Online Organized Criminals In Other Countries from the it's-a-start dept

It's no secret that Eastern Europe has become the center of an awful lot of organized crime online. Various phishing and scam rings tend to work from a variety of different Eastern European countries without much fear of law enforcement or prosecution. Most of the enforcement in the US to date has been on the few unfortunate Americans who got involved in such scams -- but such targets were almost always small-time scammers compared to the big players across the ocean. However, there are some signs that's starting to change. Forbes details the first case of a foreign cybercriminal being extradited to the US, noting that greater cooperation between foreign governments and the US means that we should be seeing more of this. However, the article also notes that this is only one small attempt, and officials haven't really been able to do any damage to some of the bigger organized crime groups online. Still, given how little the US gov't had been able to do to actually go after the real criminals, it is a good sign that at least they're looking for ways to reach across boundaries to find them.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090608/1721485170.shtml