I need to read more of the court case, did he just create a ton of free accounts? If that’s the case, then he shouldn’t be charged with anything because the worst crime he has committed is breaching TOS. Don’t they have arbitration clauses in those?
After reading a bit more it appears he social engineered away some of the limits AWS and Microsoft impose on new customers and just never paid his bills, regardless of how high the bills are. This still seems like a civil case, not a criminal case. If he stole money from a bank, criminal case. But he stole usage from two corporate entities by never paying for the usage. Imagine getting dragged into a criminal case for not paying your telephone bill.
He’s not being charged with the not paying his bills part, he’s being charged with the committing fraud to be able to get that much server time part.
Yeah but isn’t that on the provider to verify?
Indeed to catch a fraudster and then file a criminal complaint you should verify stuff.
Attempt is usually punishable when it comes to fraud, btw, he’d be on the hook even if caught before services were rendered.
The key depends on from who was the 3.5M and who got the 1M…
That is right. The thief got $1 million they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
You could try reading the article. It’s the very first sentence.
Federal prosecutors indicted a Nebraska man on charges he perpetrated a cryptojacking scheme that defrauded two cloud providers—one based in Seattle and the other in Redmond, Washington—out of $3.5 million.
Seattle and Redmond. So Amazon and Microsoft?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Federal prosecutors indicted a Nebraska man on charges he perpetrated a cryptojacking scheme that defrauded two cloud providers—one based in Seattle and the other in Redmond, Washington—out of $3.5 million.
The indictment says the activity was in furtherance of a cryptojacking scheme, a term for crimes that generate digital coin through the acquisition of computing resources and electricity of others through fraud, hacking, or other illegal means.
The defendant then allegedly laundered the proceeds through cryptocurrency exchanges, an NFT marketplace, an online payment provider, and traditional bank accounts in an attempt to disguise the illegal scheme.
Once proceeds had been converted to dollars, Parks allegedly bought a Mercedes-Benz, jewelry, first-class hotel and travel accommodations, and other luxury goods and services.
From January to August 2021, prosecutors allege, Parks created five accounts with the Seattle-based “on-demand cloud computing platform” using different names, email addresses, and corporate affiliations.
Prosecutors didn’t say precisely how Parks was able to trick the providers into giving him elevated services, deferring unpaid payments, or failing to discover the allegedly fraudulent behavior.
The original article contains 605 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I love how the article mentions these defrauded cloud providers by their headquarters, as if this obscures the fact we’re talking about Amazon Web Services and Microsoft respectively.
