$850 meeeeeelion!!!!
F*ck me. Who said crime didn't pay.
And I bet they only recover a teeny weeny proportion of the cash. Someone, somewhere, probably on a private island with a volcano and a diminutive manservant, is very happy indeed.
The FBI have said that with the help of Facebook, they've taken down an international crime gang who went on an $850m botnet spree. The ten suspects are allegedly responsible for multiple variants of the Yahos malware, which is linked to more than 11 million computer takeovers and over $850m in losses using the Butterfly …
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"Who said crime didn't pay."
Here's that statement again: The ten suspects are allegedly responsible for multiple variants of the Yahos malware, which is linked to more than 11 million computer takeovers and over $850m in losses using the Butterfly botnet"
Note that it does not say that the the gang made $850 million; it says that the losses were $850 million. Now it's possible that the gang did make that much but it is also possible that this astronomical figure includes the cost of securing computer systems and networks, lost productivity, money spent on investigations and consultants, time and effort spent by both affected customers and banks putting matters to right, and certainly quite a lot of expenses like that - in addition to the money that was actually gotten by the criminals.
It would have been nice if the article were more precise.