eBay Cybercrook Steals Identity of Officer Investigating His Online Criminal Activity

When it comes to tracking down and arresting cybercrooks for their malicious activities on the Internet, authorities have their work cut out for them. A particular officer had more than his fair share work when a cybercrook responsible for defrauding eBay customers and eBay's third-party package insurance partner had his identity stolen by the perpetrator he was tracking down.

Rohit Jawa, a 25-year-old Cincinnati, Ohio man was arrested on June 15 of this year for running eBay scams and utilizing the company's package insurance partner, ShipCover, to initiate fraudulent purchases. Mr. Jawa had 19 eBay and 18 PayPal accounts that he used for his fraudulent purchases and had been in operation for almost 3 years.

While Jawa pleaded guilty to eight counts of wire fraud, he is also pleading guilty for aggravated identity theft because he took the personal information of a US Postal Service Office of Inspector General (USPS-OIG) investigator. It just so happens that the officer is the USPS-OIG that tracked him down through a set of yahoo and 1&1 Mail and Media Inc email accounts.

Through the tracking activities conducted by the USPS-OIG officer, Jawa had a brief instance of communicating with the investigator. Through the communications, Jawa asked if the USPS-OIG officer could verify that he is a legitimate law enforcement official where he was able to gather his personal identifiable information after the fact. Upon retrieving the officer's information, Jawa used it to make additional fraudulent charges after verification through account creation on the leo.gov (Law Enforcement Online portal) and contacting the FBI for technical support to validate his account.

It's safe to say that Mr. Jawa was pretty bold in its actions to use a government official's information who was investigating his previous illegal actions to later make fraudulent purchases against him.

Agents were not going to let this one get brushed under the rug as Jawa was nearly making a mockery out of the USPS-OIG officer and nine others from the same agency who he was able to score their personal details.

Once agents were able to trace Jawa to his email accounts, officers quickly obtained a warrant and tracked Jawa down through his IP and other data gathered from 1 & 1 Media. Once he was located, Jawa was arrested and charged with fraud and identity theft. Jawa will be sentenced with time in jail decided by a judge on February 12, 2016.

We can only hope that the case of Jawa's fraudulent actions and his sentence make an example out of him, so a stern warning is sent out to others who perform similar fraudulent activity over the Internet.