Early this year, a group of rogue traders took advantage both of lax Internet security and Europe's burgeoning carbon trading system to steal as much as $4 million. The crooks, posing as regulators, set up a fake but official-looking website, and used it to obtain carbon trading account information from companies and traders who thought they were complying with government requests. The scheme forced the German Emissions Trading Authority to suspend trading, but not until 250,000 permits (each allowing the emission of one ton of carbon dioxide) had been stolen.
This is a variation of the classic "phishing" Internet scam, with a carbon twist, but it's hardly an isolated incident. On June 3, London police arrested Mike Foster, director of Carbon Harvesting Corp., and charged him in connection with an alleged scheme to bribe officials in the African country of Liberia. Foster was reportedly ready to pay $2.5 million to "rent" a fifth of Liberia's forests and profit by selling the credits that could be obtained from the carbon-absorbing trees.
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