Security News > 2022 > May > US recovers a record $15m from the 3ve ad-fraud crew

The US government has recovered over $15 million in proceeds from the 3ve digital advertising fraud operation that cost businesses more than $29 million for ads that were never viewed.

The action, Peace added, "Sends a powerful message to those involved in cyber fraud that there are no boundaries to prosecuting these bad actors and locating their ill-gotten assets wherever they are in the world."

Between December 2015 and October 2018, two Kazakhstan citizens, Sergey Ovsyannikov and Yevgeniy Timchenko, and one Russian, Aleksandr Isaev, carried out the massive fraud botnet scam and accessed more than 1.7 million infected computers in the US and globally, according to the Justice Department.

The operators used a pair of malware packages - Windows-targeting Boaxxe and Kovter - to infect victims' PCs. Once they had access to millions of devices they used hidden browsers on those computers to download fake websites and load ads onto the spoofed sites.

The FBI executed seizure warrants to sinkhole 23 internet domains and also executed search warrants at 11 different US server providers for 89 servers related to 3ve or Kovter.

During the course of the scam, the miscreants falsified billions of ad views and spoofed more than 86,000 domains, resulting in businesses paying more than $29 million, according to the Justice Department.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/05/19/us_3ve_fraud/