LONDON: Sophisticated gangs are setting up fake websites that mimic well-established companies and persuading those who visit them to part with credit card details and other valuable financial information.

Many of the biggest names in the online world, including Amazon, AOL, Ebay and PayPal, as well as a number of high-street banks, have been victims and experts believe millions of pounds may already have been stolen as a result. In one recent case a gang of Nigerian fraudsters set up a fake version of the UK bank NatWest’s online service and used it to con two Canadians out of more than pounds Sterling 100,000.

The website was identical to that of the real bank but had an additional ‘the’ at the beginning of the web address. Once the con was discovered the site was shut down but the people behind it have not been caught. NatWest’s owners, the Royal Bank of Scotland, have since bought up a wide range of website addresses which feature ‘natwest’ in order to prevent a similar con in the future.

In July, the US Federal Trade Commission charged an unidentified 17-year-old boy with producing a look-alike web page for AOL and conning hundreds of people — many of them British — out of their credit card information. The teenager produced emails that told the recipients they needed to update their AOL billing information by clicking on a linked marked ‘AOL Billing Centre’.

They were then diverted to a phony website that contained the company logo and looked identical to the real thing. Here they were instructed to enter their credit card numbers, billing addresses, national insurance numbers and other details including their mothers’ maiden names and AOL screen names and passwords.

The teenager then used the information he gained to go on an online shopping spree. He has been ordered to pay back thousands of dollars. ‘Anyone can mimic a company’s logo and graphics,’ said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. ‘We advise people to be wary and vigilant.’

A lesser version of the scam has recently hit Amazon, the online book retailer. Last week the company took action against a number of companies who have been ‘spoofing’ its email address.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.