Facebook Fake Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Receipt of Child Pornography

OKLAHOMA CITY—Daniel Leslie Mooneyham, 33, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 240 months in prison today by United States District Judge Timothy D. DeGiusti for receipt of child pornography depicting a 15-year-old boy, announced Sanford C. Coats, United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

According to court records, Mooneyham, using a fake Facebook profile, pretended to be an attractive, 18-year-old blonde female named “Terri Smith.” Posing as Terri Smith, Mooneyham would send Facebook “friend requests” to teenage boys, some of whom he knew through a church youth group and a youth camp where he volunteered. After establishing a Facebook “friendship” with teenage boys while posing as Terri Smith, Mooneyham would solicit pictures of the boys’ genitalia in exchange for sexually explicit photos of Terri Smith. Mooneyham would direct the boys to text or e-mail their nude pictures to a Yahoo! e-mail account that he had created for his Terri Smith Facebook profile. Mooneyham received nude pictures via e-mail from at least three minors and solicited others. The pictures of Terri Smith that Mooneyham sent to the boys depicted an unknown female that Mooneyham had found on the Internet. During the investigation, Mooneyham, posing as Terri Smith, also solicited a sexually explicit photo from an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a 15-year-old boy on Facebook.

When fashioning his sentence, Judge DeGiusti took into consideration evidence that, while pending sentencing, Mooneyham conspired to hire a third party to murder his wife, a plot which was ultimately foiled. His wife had reported Mooneyham’s Facebook activities to the FBI, which led to his arrest.

Mooneyham pled guilty on August 5, 2011. Upon release from prison, Mooneyham will be on supervised release for five years and will have to register as a sex offender.

This case was part of Project Safe Childhood, the flagship program in the Department of Justice’s National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, and was the result of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Edmond Police Department, and the Oklahoma City Police Department. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Hale.

Do You Know Who Your True “Friends” Are?

Social media presents both opportunities and dangers

More than half of all Americans have accounts on one or more social network  like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace. Even here at DHS we are using social media to share information and engage with the public.

While social media is a great way to communicate and share information with friends and family, there are real dangers from hackers and cyber criminals. A stranger online should be treated in the same way as a stranger in real life. Unfamiliar “friends” or connections on social networks are not likely your true friends. Worse, they could be ill-intentioned people who use social networking sites to target or collect personal information.

Whether on social networks or web connected video games, follow these simple security tips from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team:

•Limit the amount of personal information you post: Do not post information that would make you vulnerable, such as your address or information about your schedule or routine. If your trusted friends post information about you, make sure the information is not more than you would be comfortable sharing with strangers.

•Be wary of strangers: The internet makes it easy for people to misrepresent their identities and motives. If you interact with people you do not know, be cautious about the amount of information you reveal.

•Be skeptical: Don't believe everything you read online. People may post false or misleading information about various topics, including their own identities.

•Evaluate your settings: Take advantage of a site's security and privacy settings and review them regularly to make sure that your choices are still appropriate.

Stop.Think.Connect. Protect yourself and help keep the web a safer place for everyone.

For more information on the Stop.Think.Connect. Campaign, please visit dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect.

Internet Crime Complaint Center's (IC3) Scam Alerts

This report, which is based upon information from law enforcement and complaints submitted to the IC3, details recent cyber crime trends and new twists to previously-existing cyber scams.

Social Network Misspelling Scam

During December 2010, the IC3 discovered misspellings of a social network site being used as a social engineering ploy. Misspelling the domain name of this site would redirect users to websites coded to look similar to the actual website. The website users were redirected to answer three or four simple survey questions. Upon answering those questions, users were offered a choice of three free gifts. Multiple brands were observed as being offered as gifts, including gift cards to retail stores and various brands of laptops.

After clicking on one of the gifts, users were further redirected to other websites claiming to give free gifts for completing surveys. The surveys typically asked for name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. A user could spend hours filling out multiple surveys and never receive any of the gifts advertised.

Fake Online Receipt Generator Targets Unsuspecting Online Marketplace Merchant

A new scam aims to swindle online marketplace sellers by generating fake receipts. This Receipt Generator is an executable file that has been circulating on hacking forums recently. This is a particularly interesting scam - because it does not target regular PC users, it targets the sellers on online marketplace websites. This is what the would-be social engineer sees when running the program:

The social engineer can fill in a variety of information, including item name, price, and the date the order was taken. Additionally, it allows them to choose between the .com, .co.uk, .fr, and .ca marketplace portals. When they hit "Generate," an HTML file is created in the program folder which looks like this:

The program produces what appears to be a genuine marketplace receipt and a copy of the "Printable Order Summary," similar to the documents resulting from legitimate marketplace purchases. Note the small details, such as "Total before tax," "Sales tax," and other particulars that make the receipt convincing.

Many sellers on these markets will ask the buyer to send them a copy of the receipt should the buyer run into trouble, have orders go missing, lose the license key for a piece of software, and so on. The scammer relies on the seller to accept the printout at face value without checking the details. After all, how many sellers would be aware someone went to the trouble of creating a fake receipt generator?

Sellers must remain ever vigilant about this scam, which has been a popular topic in recent hacker forums. The VirusTotal detection rate is currently 1/43 – detected as Hacktool.Win32.Amagen.A.

Malicious Code In .gov E-mail

A recent malware campaign, disguised as a holiday greeting from the White House, targeted government employees. The recipient received the below e-mail with links to what masqueraded as a greeting card, but when they clicked on the link, it attempted to download a file named "card.exe." The executable program proved to be an information-stealing Trojan, which would disable the recipient’s computer security notifications, software updates, and firewall settings. The malware also installed itself into the computer’s registry, enabling the code to be executed every time the computer was rebooted. At the time of review, this particular malicious code sample had a low antivirus detection rate of 20%, with only 9 out of 43 antivirus companies reporting detection.

“From: sender@whitehouse.gov [mailto: sender@whitehouse.gov]

Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 10:33 PM

To: recipient's name

Subject: Merry Christmas, recipient's name

Recipient’s name here,

As you and your families gather to celebrate the holidays, we wanted to take a moment to send you our greetings. Be sure that we're profoundly grateful for your dedication to duty and wish you inspiration and success in fulfillment of our core mission.

Greeting card:

hxxp://xtremedefenceforce.com/card/

hxxp://elvis.com.au/card/

Merry Christmas!

___________________________________________

Executive Office of the President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500”

For more information regarding online scams visit our Press Room page for the most current Public Service Announcements.

This article was sponsored by Police Books.