Anonymiser reveals identity Dutch pudding-poisoner

By EDRi · August 27, 2003

The identity of a Dutch pudding-poisoner was revealed through an
anonymiser. The Dutchman tried to blackmail Campina, a large dairy
producer, by poisoning a tin of pudding. He made Campina open a bank
account, get a ‘world card’ with it and deposit 200.000 Euro. Then they
had to send him the details of the magnetic stripe, together with the PIN
code. With the information he created a copy of the card. To prevent being
traced, he made Campina use steganography. He sent them a floppy with a
stego program and instructed them to encode the information into a picture
of a red Volkswagen Golf.

Finally, Campina had to place the picture in a fake add on a website where
large amounts of people sell/buy second hand cars. Trying to be really
clever, the blackmailer did not approach the website with the car adds
directly, but trough an anonymiser called surfola.com. On its website this
Florida-based anonymiser claims: ‘We will not give out your name,
residence address, or e-mail address to any third parties without your
permission, for any reason, at any time, ever.’ But in spite of this
privacy-statement, Surfola immediately handed-over the details when asked
to do so by the FBI.

The poisoner was caught red-handed at an ATM trying to collect some of the
money. He immediately confessed and will be tried in the middle of
October.

Campina blackmail suspect arrested (22.08.2003)
http://www.expatica.com/index.asp?pad=2,18,&item_id=33655

Overview of available steganographic software
http://www.jjtc.com/stegoarchive/stego/software.html