Computer Specialist Held in Cyber Crime Crackdown

PHILPOTT Martin, the 26-year-old computer specialist and computer programmer was arrested in Jamaica following a two-year cyber-crime investigation. Martin, who resides in Kingston 8, Jamaica, was held at his home by detectives from the Organised Crime Investigation Division (OCID), headed by Superintendent Fitz Bailey. Martin is facing three counts of simple larceny and one count of conspiracy to defraud.Three additional arrests were also made in Kingston. "For the past two years the Organised Crime Investigation Division (OCID) has been looking into complaints from businesses and individuals, whose computer networks were compromised through network intrusion, data interception, data and identity theft," the police said in a statement yesterday. The police said that there were allegations of electronic transfer of funds from both local and overseas institutions. Among the institutions that were compromised is one of our own major telecommunication providers." The police said J$600,000, believed to be the proceeds of recent crimes, was seized during the operation. Additional, other items were also seized: . two all-in-one printers; . two external hard drives; . six GPRS modems; . one physical server, comprising of at least six to seven virtual servers; . one desktop computer; . five laptop computers; . seven mobile phones and a quantity of SIM cards. Financial records, documents and other items of furniture were seized, said the police. "At the time of the raid, five computers were being used on a network, attempting to hack into one of our major telecommunications' networks using PGP encryption software, which is used to hide data," said yesterday's statement from the police.