POLITICS-SERBIA: New Law to End ‘On-line Theft’

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Sep 26 2001 (IPS) - New times bring new customs, says an old Serbian proverb, and that can be applied to thieves too.

A new generation of thieves in Serbia have developed a more sophisticated technique, known as ‘on-line theft’, for acquiring goods, illegally.

“This practice is coming to an end,” says Branislav Stamenkovic, a lawyer.

“The new penal code, due to be adopted in parliament by the end of this year, has 12 criminal acts dealing with on-line or web crime,” he says. “Depending on the crime, on-line or computer criminals will be sent to prison for a period of six months to 10 years.”

Sergej Uljanov, of the criminal department at the Ministry of Interior, says on-line theft is just a tiny part of web crime.

“It’s a well-known fact that hackers from Serbia succeeded in disabling web sites of important foreign institutions in the past. Now that we have become part of the international community again, we have to deal with such acts accordingly,” he says.

“Hacking web sites is a crime, not fun, as many hackers think,” Uljanov says.

On-line theft flourished after Serbia was expelled from the Interpol, the international police organisation, in 1993. It was re-admitted on Sep 24.

The re-integration of Serbia into the international fold led to the process of adjustment of its outdated laws with the European system.

Hackers began wrecking havoc in Serbia after the Internet became available to the public in 1995. It took only a while for the hackers to realise that it needs only a customer’s credit card number and address for the delivery of goods, on-line.

“It was simple,” says a 25-year old Belgrade veteran of on- line theft, who gave his name only as Srdjan. “Once at the shopping site, you randomly typed a number of a certain credit card. After a few mistakes, a valid card number appears. Of course, those debited are total strangers, but the 100-U.S.-dollar limit allowed for a single on-line shopping is little for a wealthy stranger anyway.”

For years, the ‘on-line thieves’ in Belgrade have ordered books, discs, designer T-shirts and jeans, computer software and perfumes worth thousands of dollars.

“It was fun,” Srdjan says. “At one moment in 1999, I had 8,000 valid American credit card numbers stored in my computer. Of course, I only used several dozens. For some cards, I found out who the owners were. My good fairy was a person named Nina Freeman in Denver, Colorado.”

On-line thieves were careful enough not to use their personal computers and bank accounts when ordering goods. The orders were made from busy Internet cafes in Belgrade, through free e-mail hosting domains.

“One of my addresses was ‘lopov’ (thief in Serbian) at Yahoo,” Srdjan admits.

Like most other hackers, Srdjan was aware that he was breaking the law, but not a domestic one. “Serbia was an ostracised country and it took a while for shopping sites to become aware of what we were doing,” he says.

The United Nations imposed sanctions on Serbia after former president Slobodan Milosevic invaded his neighbours in 1990s.

“The shopping sites regularly sent the goods to Serbia and we picked the parcels,” says Srdjan. “Some hackers, I know, opened their own business. They placed ads in papers offering specific orders. They paid customs duties when the parcels arrived and sold merchandise for half its original price, and made good money. At customs office, nobody bothered to ask them how they obtained the goods.”

Srdjan and other young ‘on-line thieves’ say they know at least a hundred people in Belgrade who were involved in the scandal. Similar groups exist all over Serbia.

“The shopping sites were so naive for years,” Srdjan says. “But, along the road, some of them received complains from people whose cards we used. Major on-line servers, like Amazon.com and Yahoo.com finally rejected sending goods to Serbia last year.”

The situation is, however, changing after the fall of Milosevic from power last year.