Facebook password guesser is sentenced for fraud

A MAN HAS BEEN SENTENCED to 15 months porridge for using his neighbours' and friends' personal information to gain access to their bank accounts and steal their money.

The Telegraph reports that Ian Wood spent around 18 hours a day on his computer trying to work out passwords. In between that and sleeping, the paper reports, he was able to steal £35,000, which he then gambled away.

Despite his obvious lack of sleep, Wood was able to carry out his scam for quite some time without being caught and his thefts were only noticed when he changed his system.

Judge Guy Whitburn said at Newcastle Crown Court, "This is the first time I've come across a sophisticated fraud such as this, it was very well planned, complex and clever."

"He was using other people's identities and there was a considerable breach of trust in assuming his neighbours' identities. It is an extremely bad deception on people in the same block of flats as he. People's blood runs cold when they see money taken from their accounts."

Having had some success between June 2008 and June 2010 Wood, made the error of transferring £1,500 from an account belonging to his neighbour into his own bank account. It was a bit obvious, or you might say stupid.

Perhaps more stupid was what Wood said when the police came knocking, which was, "Have you been on to me for a while?"

While he was successful, Wood would intercept his neighbours' post for the personal information it might contain, and he would try to answer or guess memorable user information on different social networking accounts.

"He said he would be on the computer 18 hours per day to find out information about people on websites such as Facebook and Friends Reunited. He would make friends with people on Facebook and have got their usernames he would try it on the bank websites, on the basis people use the same passwords," said prosecutor Neil Pallister.

"If that did not work he would fill in the security information which he had got from Facebook and Friends Reunited." µ