IT Services News

Michael Dolan, a resident of Connecticut, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for perpetrating a phishing scheme that targeted AOL users in four years. Last Wednesday, Dolan was finally sentenced by a Connecticut federal court. He will also be serving three years supervised release, and will be paying $200 special assessment. Dolan was charged of fraud and aggravated identity theft. 

Dolan was alleged of masterminding a scam involving five other men who harvested thousands of AOL email addresses and infected victims’ PCs with malicious software. This software would prevent the users from logging on to AOL without entering their credit card numbers, bank account numbers and other personal information. The scam lasted from 2002 to 2006.

Initially, Dolan’s lawyer claimed that his client suffered from severe mental illness due to his father’s death. However, the court was not swayed by their argument and instead sentenced Dolan for the phishing crime. He was also alleged for an attempt to  bribe a codefendant, and a threat to kill someone he thought was a government informant. Dolan previously conceded that he earned more than $400,000 from the scam.