Three charged in XP Antispyware 2010 fraud; FBI says $100m lost

An FBI investigation has led to criminal charges against three men responsible for XP Antispyware 2010 and allegedly a wide range of other bogus home computer security software that scared victims in more than 60 countries into paying $100 million over the past three years.

Three men are named in a 57-page indictment, one in Cincinnati and the other two apparently in Sweden and the Ukraine. They're also connected to the rogue Internet service provider 3FN, which the FTC said last month it would liquidate. Among the many fake companies the trio and their accomplices created was Innovative Marketing, registered in Belize and based in Ukraine, and which is the acknowledged originator of XP Antispyware 2010, known by at least 40 other names.

The key connection in the U.S. is James Reno, 26, of Amelia in the Cincinnati area, whose company Byte Hosting Internet Services hired call centers to sell Innovative Marketing products, to process transactions, and even to occasionally process refunds for irate customers. This was done, the indictment says, primarily to avoid suspicion from banks it used to process its fraudulent transactions. The other two men are Bjorn Daniel Sundin, 31, and Shaileshkumar P. Jain, 40, the top executives of Innovative Marketing.