One of the major players in “High Roller” poker tournaments around the world was arrested earlier this week for his company’s involvement in an alleged malware ring that netted nearly $4 million.
According to reports from several technology websites, Japanese poker professional Masaaki Kagawa was arrested, along with eight other people associated with Kagawa’s company Koei Planning, by authorities in Japan for pushing a computer malware attack. The malware program, known as Android Enesoluty, allegedly appeared in September last year and was applied to users of those Android cell phones through April 2013. The program seems harmless enough, but it was the information gleaned by the program which raised the antennae of law enforcement.
According to the authorities, Android Enesoluty would collect information on a user’s cellphone, such as their address book, and send that info back to the Koei Planning servers. Once there, Kagawa and the others charged in the malware ring would use the e-mail addresses gathered from the program to send invitations to a falsified dating website which charged users for participation but provided no actual services. In total, Android Enesoluty allegedly collected over 37 million e-mail addresses from 810,000 Android cellphones and tablets and generated $3.9 million from the fake dating site.
The Japan Daily Press reports that the malware program could be more malicious than what it appears. “The mobile malware was just a step towards his real scheme, which was to send out spam about his dating site and get people to sign up over there and not really get any service,” Vikram Thakur, principal research manager at Symantec Security Response (the company that discovered the malware program), said to the Press.
The Press continues on to point out the further ramifications of the alleged actions by Kagawa. “There is also a danger that Kagawa might have sold the harvested email addresses to 3rd party spammers who would pay for that kind of data,” Press writer John Hofilena notes. Thakur agrees with Hofilena, commenting, “By getting signups is where he made his money, but that’s not to say that he didn’t also sell the contact information on to spammers and the like.”
News of Kagawa’s arrest has surprisingly raised little interest in the poker world although Kagawa has been a part of some of the biggest tournaments around the world. “On an EPT episode it showed ‘ElkY’ and (Eugene) Katchalov touring Japan with (Kagawa),’ poster ‘Syzygy123’ wrote on Two Plus Two. “I wonder if they knew he was shady.” Another poster, ‘BenG2013,’ seemed to capture the mood of many when he posted, “Companies all over the planet distribute and use your e-mail address all the time without your consent…if you are dumb enough to pay for a fake dating site that pops up in your e-mail, then I have no sympathy for you.”
What may be surprising to some is why Kagawa would allegedly get involved in such an operation, considering he has been a part of the high stakes poker world for at least the last six years. He participated in the 2007 Aussie Millions $100,000 Hold’em tournament, placing in third for a $250,000 (Australian) score, and has also played in “High Roller” events at the European Poker Championships in 2008, the World Poker Tour World Championship in 2009, an Asia/Pacific Poker Tour High Roller tournament (finishing in second) and the European Poker Tour Grand Final Super High Roller last year and the $100,000 Challenge at this year’s Aussie Millions. All totaled, Kagawa has over $1.5 million in career earnings from his poker playing endeavors.
Charges have yet to be announced against Kagawa and his associates, but it is only a matter of time before they are released, according to many in the tech realm. In the United States, the laws regarding computer hacking, malware attacks and other tech related offenses are relatively light (a few years in prison at its most extreme), but laws in Japan may be a bit more strict.
