A former San Diego college student, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara, is now FBI's most wanted cyber-criminals. The student developed a program called "Lover Spy" or "Email PI".
The program was called "Loverspy" because it was marketed as a software that could catch a cheating lover by sending the person an electronic greeting card which, when opened, would install a malicious software in the recipient's computer. The software would then enable the sender to spy on e-mails and instant messages on the recipient's computer or even spy on the person via webcam. "The program collected keystrokes and other incoming and outgoing electronic communications on the victims' computers. The program would periodically send e-mail messages back to the purchasers of the service containing the acquired communications, including the victims' passwords, lists of visited websites, intercepted e-mail messages, and keystroke logs," FBI said.
The program was priced at $89 and sold to at least 1,000 customers who tried to infect about 2,000 others and stalk them.
Perez-Melara was indicted in July 2005. According to the indictment, the program was created "with stealth in mind, claiming that it would be impossible to detect by 99.9 percent of users."
According to FBI cyber division chief John Brown, Perez-Melara made it to the most-wanted list partly because he has has been able to elude the authorities for so long. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information related to his whereabouts.
