Today in NY, 8 men were indicted on 13 charges incl incl. wire fraud, computer intrusion, aggravated ID theft, money laundering. What did they do? They ran a global ad fraud scheme. My exclusive story, and a thread about why these charges are a big deal: buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs…
In early 2017, Google and White Ops started working together to investigate a botnet. It had started small, but was growing, and kept evading efforts to contain it. They gave it a name: 3ve (pronounced eve). Soon, they shared info with the FBI because they were so concerned. 
Here's the thing: criminal investigations of ad fraud are rare. It's crazy because ad fraud is one of the world's most lucrative criminal industries, second only to the drug trade! But recently the FBI has been getting up to speed on it. 3ve was the bureau's biggest case yet.
As the FBI dug in during 2017, Google and White Ops gathered about 15+ ad and cybersecurity companies to work with them. Meanwhile, 3ve was growing. It had a botnet of 1.7 million infected computers ad well as two separate data center operations that could also generate bots.
In August of 2017, the FBI asked all the industry partners to meet in a secure room. This was the first time the FBI, DOJ, and so many tech companies had come together for any kind of ad fraud investigation. A DOJ attorney stood up and said they were serious about ad fraud.
There have been ad fraud cases in the past, but very few of them. This is one reason why it's so attractive for criminals. “Ad fraud is one of the most profitable crimes with the least amount of risk,” Tamer Hassan, the CTO of White Ops told me. It's absolutely true.
Today's charges come after the biggest FBI investigation into ad fraud to date. Most importantly, the fact that the bureau stuck with it for close to 2 years means the agents now have the industry and technical understanding needed to go after ad fraud. Bad news for fraudsters?
Maybe. No single indictment is going to scare off the criminals. The money is too good. But if the DOJ is serious about investigating, prosecuting, and (when necessary) extraditing ad fraudsters, this marks a new level of deterrence and punishment that was not there before.
I've been investigating ad fraud for about 18 months now, so here's a few stories if you want to see how widespread and insane this issue is: buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs…
