The identity of a Dutch pudding-poisoner was revealed through an anonymiser. The Dutchman tried to blackmail Campina, a large dairy producer, by poisoning a tin of pudding. He made Campina open a bank account, get a 'world card' with it and deposit 200.000 Euro. Then they had to send him the details of the magnetic stripe, together with the PIN code. With the information he created a copy of the card. To prevent being traced, he made Campina use steganography. He sent them a floppy with a stego program and instructed them to encode the information into a picture of a red Volkswagen Golf.

Finally, Campina had to place the picture in a fake add on a website where large amounts of people sell/buy second hand cars. Trying to be really clever, the blackmailer did not approach the website with the car adds directly, but trough an anonymiser called surfola.com. On its website this Florida-based anonymiser claims: 'We will not give out your name, residence address, or e-mail address to any third parties without your permission, for any reason, at any time, ever.' But in spite of this privacy-statement, Surfola immediately handed-over the details when asked to do so by the FBI.

The poisoner was caught red-handed at an ATM trying to collect some of the money. He immediately confessed and will be tried in the middle of October.

Campina blackmail suspect arrested (22.08.2003)
http://www.expatica.com/index.asp?pad=2,18,&item_id=33655

Overview of available steganographic software
http://www.jjtc.com/stegoarchive/stego/software.html