First phishing conviction across the Channel

A student has become the first person to be convicted in France for phishing fraud. The man has received a one-year suspended prison sentence with €8,500 damages and charges.

The sentence, which was passed at a court in Strasbourg on 2 September 2004, has only been made public this week, after the time in which the man could have appealed had expired.

The FDI or le Forum des droits sur l'internet - the Internet Rights Forum in English - revealed the information. The FDI was informed by the IT Fraud Enquiry Unit, a division of the police linked to the Paris force. The unit worked with the FDI on the Observatoire Cyber Conso, a project whose mission is to discover the habits and trends of internet users.

Benoît Tabaka, FDI head and lawyer, said the convicted man had created a website, which mimicked that of popular French bank Crédit Lyonnais, designed to steal personal details and passwords from the bank's customers.

The man conned around a dozen people out of €20,000.

Following a report made by one of the victims, the police investigated and then charged the suspect.

"When the police officers arrived at his home, they discovered that he had in fact made fake websites for the almost all of the French banks," Tabaka said.

Two other subtly different similar also occurred last summer, affecting customers of the French financial institutions Société générale and Bred. "The investigation revealed that there was a Trojan horse on the victims' computers, which was activated when they logged on to the online bank," he added.

Estelle Dumout writes for ZDNet France.