Two Georgian men arrested for Facebook fraud

Georgian police have detained two local men for online fraud.

One man was accused of illegally accessing other users’ Facebook profiles and adding them to closed groups, while the other was accused of changing users’ passwords and posting advertisements on their personal profile pages.

Police alleged the illegal actions of the two detainees, aged 23 and 32, has affected more than 2000 Facebook users. Some of the victims were aware they had been targeted while others were oblivious.

An investigation revealed one of the arrested men had created a phisher webpage, similar to Facebook, with the aim of obtaining personal information by deceit.

The accused posted various types of information to the social network and provided a link to his phishing page. Users who clicked the link found themselves on the fake page, where they were asked to reenter their username and password.

Users who logged on to the fake page had their details automatically sent to an online database where the accused illegally stored the information. The accused then used the fraudulently obtained information to log on to users’ Facebook accounts and add them to closed groups.

During a search of this man’s computer accused, police found 1,010 illegally obtained passwords in the file.

Meanwhile the other detainee also illegally penetrated Facebook accounts and changed users’ passwords then posted advertisements from their profiles, claimed police. In exchange, the man received a certain amount of cash from those who ordered the advertisements. Police discovered this man had illegally reached 1,210 profiles.

After arresting the alleged offenders, police are now in the process of returning the hacked Facebook accounts to their legal owners.