Russian ring steals US$5m daily selling ads on fake sites

San Francisco

IN a twist on the peddling of fake news to real people, researchers said that a Russian cyberforgery ring has created more than half a million fake Internet users and 250,000 fake websites to trick advertisers into collectively paying as much as US$5 million a day for video ads that are never watched.

The fraud, which began in September and is still going on, represents a new level of sophistication among criminals who seek to profit by using bots - computer programs that pretend to be people - to cheat advertisers.