Sean’s blog

I don’t claim to know, but I *BET* that it has something to do with the fact that the chances of getting caught are basically zero.  I also hypothesize that it is a pretty pleasant form of crime to commit, there is no chance of violence and you can do it sitting at your desk eating cheetos. For being safe and easy, it probably pays pretty well.

For example, lets suppose there is a crook who buys $100 pieces of electronics online with stolen credit cards. Even though the majority of fraud attempts are unsuccessful, he can still make some cash.  Let’s assume that an online fraudster spends his/her day like this:

2 hours / day finding new credit card numbers on carders forums online
4 hours / day to place 24 fraudulent orders  (1 every 10 minutes)
2  hours / day to fence and receive the stolen goods
Rest: playing world of warcraft

Of the 24 attempts, let’s assume that 2 get through, a success rate below 10%, and that each success resulted in $100 worth of goods.  So this little fraudster made $200 in illegal income for his 8 hours of work, around $25 / hour, or assuming 250 working days / year, around $50k / year.  He is not rich, but has a decent income and he faces basically 0% risk of getting arrested and, since he never sees his victims, can probably forget that he’s actually committing a crime.

I need to do more research, but I bet that we could reduce the amount of  fraud significantly by pursuing and catching a small portion of these crooks. The penalties for credit card fraud are significant, so even a small portion of successful prosecutions could reduce the average outcome for the scammers.  “Penalties for credit card fraud include fines and/or imprisonment for up to ten or twenty years, depending on the specific provisions of the law that has been violated. The maximum sentence for a second offense is twenty years.” (http://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal-law/credit-card-fraud.htm).