A recent report by Arstechnica.com states that a poker pro is involved in an Android malware scam. The scam was investigated by Symantec and it was discovered that those involved were using several methods in the scamming process and were able to take almost $4 million from their victims.
Symantec, in conjunction with police of the Chiba Prefectural located in Japan were able to determine that nine people were involved in the scam, including a poker pro who has earned over $1.5 million in poker tournaments, including the latest Aussie Millions.
Nine people were arrested and found to be using emails that had links for their victims to download Android Enesoluty. This malware program was used to collect information which were stored on the victim’s device.
The Android Enesoluty program is considered a Trojan that operates as a application. The program takes the information and then sends it to computers that were operated by the scammers. The program was discovered back in September of last year.
The investigation into the recent scamming found that the main person behind the operation was Masaaki Kagawa, who not coincidentally also plays in the highest stakes poker games around. He is also the president of the Koei Planning IT firm.
Kagawa has competed in high stakes poker tournaments since 2008 and recently competed in the 2013 Aussie Millions Poker Championship. Kagawa was able to earn $320,000 for competing in this tournament. According to the report by Arstechnica.com, Kagawa was actually being investigated while he competed in the Aussie event.
Symantec explained the case by stating:
“From our observations, the operation began around September 2012 and ended in April 2013 when authorities raided the company office. We confirmed around 150 domains were registered to host the malicious apps during this time span. According to media reports, the group was able to collect approximately 37 million e-mail addresses from around 810,000 Android devices.
The company earned over 390 million yen (approximately 3.9 million US dollars) by running a fake online dating service called Sakura in the last five months of the spam operation. Spam used to lure victims to the dating site was sent to the addresses collected by the malware.”
With Kagawa earning a nice living as a president of a top company as well as earning some big paydays in some high stakes poker games, it makes one wonder why he would be involved in this type of scam. More information in the case should be released in the coming weeks as the investigation continues.
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