Romo Vlads Charged In Miami For Internet Fraud

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Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:35 pm

http://cbs4.com/local/Lebada.Florea.Grigor.2.843509.html

Quote:

In Los Angeles, Two Other Romanians Were Indicted For Their Roles In A $150,000 Internet Auction Scheme.
MIAMI (CBS4) ― Seven people were part of a Romanian organized crime group whom prosecutors in Miami charged with a scheme to rip off customers of Internet auction sites.

The charges suggest that the defendants posted for sale items such as boats, personal watercraft and other merchandise, but no goods were ever delivered to customers who had wire-transferred money for their purchase, prosecutors allege.

Cristian Florea, Sorin Lebada, and Nicolae Grigor entered not-guilty pleas at their arraignment on Thursday in Miami.

Cristian Florea is one of seven people charged as part of a Romanian organized crime internet scamming scheme.

Lebada was arrested in July after leaving a Western Union terminal in a Cooper City Wal-Mart.

Four others are believed to be living in Romania, and U.S. prosecutors are seeking their extradition.

During 2006, Internet auction fraud was the most reported offense, according to FBI statistics, comprising 44.9% of referred crime complaints.

I would like to hear such good news every day. Very Happy

Eniac

Chuck Norris Joined: 11 Jun 2007 Posts: 1369

Hell yeah any day that the Romo vlads have a bad day is a great day for the rest of us. Thumbs up

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:42 pm

^^^^^^^

Agreed.

EDIT: Lets wait and see if the Ivans deface CBS's website for reporting this.

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:56 pm

I spent a couple of days in Romania back in September. The place looked more modern in some ways than Bulgaria, some of the cities and towns looked almost western european.

However, there was a bit of creepiness though. for example, on the trains, "gangs" of Romanian youth will get on there, harass people, and go up and down the passage in the train cars, and take photos of women through the glass doors. Some German women I know said Romanian men do the same thing on the beachs.

Romanians (v)lads. Why didtn I think of that, thats so fitting.

Taxi drivers anywhere in eastern europe are crooked, but it seems scamming is more much prevalent in Romania than other Eastern European countries. Bulgaria has more of a mafia presence, but you arent going to run into them.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

Excellent news, Eniac! clapping

Thanks for posting it. Very Happy

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 6:54 am

firepilot wrote:

Bulgaria has more of a mafia presence, but you arent going to run into them.

At aa419.org we have recorded only a very small number (just a hand full) of frauds from Bulgaria but over ten thousand from Romania. The vlads now have more fake sites registered as the mugus have!
Romania has become the Nigeria of Europe... Evil or Very Mad

Eniac

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:32 am

In Italy a gang of five or so has been arrested some time ago after having scammed 'round 1 million €... I wonder if the money was seized and shared among the victims.
The vlads were all Romanians...

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:40 am

I worked with four very professional young Romanians two or three years ago. They told me that their country was extremely keen to join the EU as soon as possible because it would bring them a great many benefits. (No pun intended on the word "benefits", UK readers will know where I'm coming from).
The trouble was, they said, that they felt that Romania would only be a burden on the EU in the short term as (their words, not mine) thieving, robbery and particularly corruption are a way of life in Romania. Apparently, if you are not robbing or conning someone for your "living" you're a weak fool. They wanted to see corruption stamped out first, along with the attitude that thieving was somehow an acceptable way of life that many aspire to.

Very sad.

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 12:53 pm

Mugatu wrote:

if you are not robbing or conning someone for your "living" you're a weak fool.

Same picture as the one we were told about nigerians and west africans since the beginning by our mentors. It is the ideal background to make scammers flourish.
Apparently, corruption was fought with better results in Romania than in Bulgaria, the EU says just before the two countries joined the Union. But Romanians are far more likely to leave their country, so creating vast nets of personal and professional relationships, that could work also for illegal purposes. Bulgarians are far less consistent if you consider the main communities of foreign people in western Europe, with special eye for south and ‘latin’ ones.
Sadly, even a great share of gipsies comes from there, thus increasing the bad feeling that there's a link between country and crime.
Don’t think I’m biased against Romanians: my first great love was from there… Embarassed

Edit: misspelling

Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:30 am

Oh, I am VERY biased. I hate the low life scum that gives my country a bad name. Those bastards invented the "fake lottery" scam by mobile phone.
Anyway, what I cannot understand is "vlads".
We do not speak a slavic language. For me, "vlads" sounds ok for russian, ukrainian and other slavic scammers. Why not rolads?

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 3:45 am

Kabuto Sama wrote:

Oh, I am VERY biased. I hate the low life scum that gives my country a bad name. Those bastards invented the "fake lottery" scam by mobile phone.
Anyway, what I cannot understand is "vlads".
We do not speak a slavic language. For me, "vlads" sounds ok for russian, ukrainian and other slavic scammers. Why not rolads?

Well, there was that famous Romanian, Vlad Tepes Smile

Actually in regards to another message up above, scamming is not a way of life in West Africa, just mainly that part of Nigeria. I used to live in Mali, and scamming and even crime for that matter, is rather rare.

But they were getting pretty upset, how refuguees to Mali, would bring their scams with them. Much of West Africa is French speaking, they do not know enough English generally to do scams anyways. Nigeria inherited English from its time as a English colony, as did Ghana.

Chuck Norris Joined: 11 Jun 2007 Posts: 1369

Quote:

Actually in regards to another message up above, scamming is not a way of life in West Africa. Much of West Africa is French speaking, they do not know enough English generally to do scams anyways.

For the Francophone countries, it's easy. They simply do their scams in French language--I get many offerings from CI or Benin mugus in French on a regular basis. There is a community of French-speaking baiters that specialize in these particular lads. Sometimes the CI or Benin mugus will attempt English language scamming by using Babelfish translations, though, which can make it interesting.

Benin mugus in particular also set up fake websites.

As far as the Romanian scammers though, I call them any number of things, none of them very nice or appropriate to repeat here Laughing

but for "nicknames" have commonly heard vlad or Romo.

BTW, more bad times for some of them:

http://www.mediafax.ro/engleza/romanian-prosecutors-indict-80-people-in-internet-fraud-case.html?6966;3349826

And 17 more:

http://www.mediafax.ro/social/valcea-ordonante-de-retinere-pentru-17-suspecti-de-fraude-informatice.html?1688;3352879

The last article is in Romanian. Basically, 17 were arrested for the same internet auction fraud, and another six were incarcerated for the same type of crimes. The last paragraph indicated that DIICOT indicted 80 in internet fraud, referring to the same ones as the English article mentioned.

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:26 am

http://forum.aa419.org/viewtopic.php?t=25741&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:05 am

Kabuto Sama wrote:

Anyway, what I cannot understand is "vlads".

Sure, Romania is a neolatin language speaking country, but i assume “vlads” is a common way of referring to central or eastern european scammers. At the very beginning, I assumed it was just referred to love scams.

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 11:54 am

Well, I assumed it was just for love scams too.
Anyway, I am glad those bastards got what they deserved.

Laughing

And for your information, a bit of irony:
An elite unit of Romanian Gendarmerie, specialized in fighting terrorism, organized crime and cybercrime is called "Vlad Ţepeş"

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