Teenager escapes jail after £9000 phishing scam

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
@
@[email protected]
@gcluley

An interesting story has bubbled up from the Cambridgeshire area of East England, about a young chap who has escaped jail after being found guilty of involvement in a phishing scam.

18-year-old Ronaldas Janusevicius is reported has been struck with a community service sentence and ordered to pay over £600 in fines for his part in a criminal scheme which stole £9000 from an online bank account.

The innocent victim, a man named Benjamin Burnip, received a phishing email pretending to come from the Lloyds TSB, bank asking him to update his online banking credentials. Mr Burnip’s bank account was subsequently hacked into, a loan requested, and his overdraft increased by £9000.

Curiously, Janusevicius claimed – and the court agreed with him – that he was not responsible for sending the email, and had not obtained the victim’s bank account…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.


Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.