Swedish scareware payment processor gets US prison sentence

A Swedish citizen extradited to the US to stand trial for his part in a US$71 million (A$67.3 million) scareware scam has been sentenced to two years in prison.

The United States Department of Justice said Mikael Patrick Sallnert processed payments for an international cybercrime ring that infected roughly 960,000 computers with scareware.

After infecting the computers, the scammers would then sell rogue antivirus software to "secure" the victims' systems for US$129 (A$122.30), but this was in fact useless, according to the prosecutors of the DoJ's Criminal Division.

Sallnert was arrested in Denmark in January this year and extradited to the United States in March.

He pleaded guility to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and accessing a protected computer in furtherance of fraud.

The Swede established payment processing mechanisms for the scareware scammers between August 2008 and October 2009, netting some US$5 million (A$4.75 million) in credit card charges for the scheme, according to court documents.