Hacker nabbed for e-blackmail

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 27 Sept 2007

Police have arrested a hacker who allegedly illegally accessed patient records and threatened to make them available to the media if he was not paid a ransom.

Juan de Wit, 31, is to appear in Cape Town's Magistrates Court tomorrow to apply for bail. He was arrested in Port Elizabeth, last Wednesday, and appeared in court on Friday on charges of extortion and contravening the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act of 2002.

Police spokesman captain Percy Morokane says De Wit allegedly sent an e-mail to a director of Electronic Patient Records (EPR), a company responsible for the storage and safekeeping of electronic patient files at government hospitals, on 8 September.

Reportedly calling himself "Monster Hacker", De Wit threatened that he had accessed EPR's databases and stolen confidential medical records, which he would reveal to the media if his demands were not met.

"It was established that the suspect had, in fact, hacked into certain medical records," Morokane says. "The suspect demanded, inter alia, a once-off payment from EPR into a credit card account."

Commercial crime branch detectives investigated and arrested De Wit at a house in Port Elizabeth.

Credit card fraudsters

Meanwhile, the Commercial Crimes Unit, in the Western Cape, has arrested a Somali man and his wife in connection with various incidents of credit card fraud and the manufacturing of false credit cards.

Abdul Cadir Mohamed Scech Faghi, 33, who was on the police's "wanted" list, was arrested in the car park of a well-known hotel in Cape Town. Faghi, who is also known as Massimo, has been linked to credit card fraud and was sought by police since last year.

"Following investigations and surveillance, Faghi's wife, Umaymah Ahmed, 19, was arrested late last week in a house in Cape Town," says Morokane. "Investigating officers seized a total of 119 blank international credit cards, eight blank Standard Bank Maestro debit cards, 20 white plastic cards, three card readers (skimming devices), encoding equipment and computer software, computer equipment used to manufacture false credit cards, an HP electronic diary, two cellular phones and a wireless Web cam."

Morokane says the two have already appeared in the Cape Town magistrate's court. Both were denied bail. The cases have been postponed for further investigation.

According to the police's latest annual report, the Commercial Crimes Unit received 21 447 complaints during the 2006/7 financial year - up from 16 169 in 2005/6. Over 7 600 people were arrested or made their first appearance in court.