Mikael Patrick Sallnert, Scareware Cybercrime, Washington 2012

A Swedish credit card payment processor was sentenced to 48 months in prison for his role in an international cybercrime ring that netted $71 million by infecting victims’ computers with ‘scareware’.

Mikael Patrick Sallnert, 37, a citizen of Sweden, was sentenced on no date specified by Chief U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman in the Western District of Washington. In addition to his prison term, Sallnert was ordered to pay $650,000 in forfeiture.

Sallnert was arrested on January 19, 2012 in Denmark and extradited to the United States in March 2012. He pleaded guilty on August 17, 2012 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of accessing a protected computer in furtherance of fraud.

The prosecution of Sallnert is part of Operation Trident Tribunal, an ongoing, coordinated enforcement action targeting international cybercrime. The operation targeted international cybercrime rings that caused more than $71 million in total losses to more than one million computer users through the sale of fraudulent computer security software known as ‘scareware.’

Scareware is malicious software that poses as legitimate computer security software and purports to detect a variety of threats on the affected computer that do not actually exist. Users are then informed they must purchase what they are told is anti-virus software in order to repair their computers.

The scareware scheme used a variety of ruses to trick consumers into unknowingly infecting their computers with the malicious scareware products, including web pages featuring fake computer scans. Once the scareware was downloaded, victims were notified that their computers were infected with a range of malicious software, such as viruses and Trojans and badgered into purchasing the fake antivirus software to resolve the non-existent problem at a cost of up to $129.

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