Stock-trading Trojan creator Van T. Dinh is accused of hacking again

As The Register reports, Van T. Dinh, 25, who had previously been imprisoned for the creation in 2004 a Trojan horse program that posed as a stock-tracking tool while working as a 19 year-old stock trader, is back in trouble with the law.

As it’s known, in 2004 he was jailed for 13 months after he was convicted of hacking into an account run by a fellow stock trader to buy a variety of worthless stock derivatives he had got stuck with the year before. Dinh’s tactic made him become the first person to be charged with both computer hacking and identity theft offences. Thus 19 year-old guy created a Trojan horse program that posed as a stock-tracking tool. When his victim used the tool Dinh handed over access to a trading account. He used this access to sell on Cisco "put" options that were about to expire, shaving his potential losses of $90,000 by $37,000 in the process.

Last Friday Dinh , was charged with two counts of computer hacking over accusations he hacked into an online currency exchange service before allegedly attempted to transfer $110,000 to an account under his control. The transfers were made in two batches days apart in December 2008, after Dinh had allegedly broken into the firm's admin systems. He is accused of using this privileged access in attempting currency trades involving two other third-party customer accounts, and of trying to transfer $140,000 into one of these accounts. FBI investigators attempts back to the Pennsylvanian home Dinh shares with his mother. Although the attempted scam cost its unnamed victim $5,000 in restoration and recovery costs before any money was actually transferred the fraud was detected.