WASHINGTON (CNN) - Top federal law enforcement officials Thursday announced the conclusion of an operation that brought 53 convictions involving a series of cyber crimes that targeted 150,000 victims.
Operation Web Snare, which began June 1, wrapped up Thursday with several arrests at locations across the country. Justice Department officials said victims lost more than $215 million.
They said there were 160 investigations against the various schemes aimed at 350 subjects resulting in 117 criminal complaints or indictments and 140 search warrants.
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the results of the initiative, which he said was targeted at a variety of online economic crimes, including identity theft, fraud, counterfeit software, computer intrusions and intellectual property theft.
"Operation Web Snare is the largest and most successful collaborative law-enforcement operation ever conducted to prosecute online fraud, stop identity theft, and prevent other computer-related crimes," Ashcroft said.
One of the major schemes officials said was targeted as part of the operation is phishing, the sending of e-mails designed to look like they are from legitimate financial institutions or other senders requesting financial or other confidential personal information.
Another major problem and the fastest growing type of computer-related crime is identity theft. The Federal Trade Commission says 10 million Americans had their identities stolen last year. The Justice Department says identity theft costs the nation's businesses nearly $50 billion a year in fraudulent transactions.
Ashcroft gave one example of a worker in Kansas City charged with conspiring with five of her co-workers to steal several pages listing their co-workers' Social Security numbers. They allegedly took the information to Chicago and used it to fraudulently apply for credit cards.
Authorities also said they are seeing more use of the Internet to commit crime against rival businesses, bringing a substantial loss of revenue last year and the disruption of many Web sites.
-- from CNN Justice Producer Terry Frieden
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