http://www.nbc24.com/Global/story.asp?S=4195206 Kevin Milliken kmilliken @ nbc24.com December 2, 2005 (Fremont, OH) --- You could say 27-year old Chad Mockensturm had a bad week. Now he's spending his birthday behind bars. Fremont police say Mockensturm recently got fired from a car audio dealer and ended up living in a Fremont motel. But detectives call Mockensturm a "gadget guy" who cooked up an elaborate computer scheme to make fake prescriptions and feed an addiction to painkillers. "I wouldn't say he's a computer genius, but I would say fairly intelligent," said Tony Emrich, a Fremont police detective. "This is not your average prescription fraudulent activity." Police say the scheme started with a keychain gadget known as a wi-fi finder, which scans for wireless Internet service. Once Mockensturm found a signal, detectives say would park his van in front of someone's house, steal their wireless Internet access, and download the prescription painkiller information he needed --- without them ever knowing it. Once he returned to his motel room, detectives say Mockensturm would plug the painkiller information into his computer, then scan an actual prescription, rewrite it, and print out a bogus batch. Police say the real prescription was for a name-brand drug. But without medical insurance, Mockensturm could only afford a cheap high-- so he went for generic painkillers. Mockensturm got busted waiting in line at Kroger, when workers at the pharmacy smelled fraud. "We're glad we picked this up fairly early on, because I think in time he would have realized what he was capable of doing with his intelligence and it could have been a real big headache for us," Emrich admitted. Police call the case a warning shot for all wireless Internet users, especially those that don't protect their access with security measures. Detectives admit Mockensturm could have stolen all sorts of personal information from people, but only wanted drugs. _________________________________________ Earn your Master's degree in Information Security ONLINE www.msia.norwich.edu/csi Study IA management practices and the latest infosec issues. Norwich University is an NSA Center of Excellence.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Dec 05 2005 - 02:03:30 PST