On this week’s episode of CSI: Cyber in Cleveland, Ohio a man, Carl Bruno was ordering coffee at a shop when he began to feel dizzy and experience blurred vision. His phone rang, but he wasn’t able to see what was on the screen. He abruptly left the coffee shop, where someone banged into him and spilled his cup of coffee. The man stumbled into traffic and got hit by a car.
Carl was killed in the accident and the FBI was informed of his death and given the results from the medical examiner’s autopsy. A prescription bottle of pills was found near Carl’s body, bringing the FDA into the investigation of his death, as well as the FBI. The medicine had been purchased from an online pharmacy based in Canada. The FDA had been tracing the pharmacy because many of its customers had complained about it. It was suspected that fraudulent ads were placed on a pharmacy’s website and that had something to do with what led to Carl’s death. Agent Ryan said Carl’s death was a homicide.
Daniel took a closer look at the ads on the website and found harmful codes in them. Nelson tested out the website by inputting symptoms he had and as a result, the website told him he had cancer that he did not have. Carl’s widow then showed up at FBI headquarters to talk to Deputy Sifter and Agent Ryan about her husband’s death. She then told them that she was responsible for the death of Carl. She told them she bought the prescription medication for him that ended up killing him. They tracked the delivery of the prescription medication to Carl’s house by the zip code it came from.
Daniel and Nelson were then told to take that information and find the machine that stamped the package to be mailed to Carl. Through deduction, they narrowed it down to four possibilities. They then narrowed it down to the IP address associated with the machine that stamped the package. They determined the package’s beginnings in Texas and agents Ryan and Mundo went there. At the address, they found a man named Paul who surrendered to them. Agent Ryan determined he was the middle man in the scheme, rather than the boss of it. She said Paul had taken the job to gain access to cancer medication he thought would help him. Paul told them he met a man online who had access to black-market pills and he started working with the man. Paul becomes so emotional upon finding out that Carl had died that he collapsed feet from the agents.
Deputy Sifter went to the corporate office of the website where the fraudulent ads were placed that led people to this illegal Canadian online pharmacy. He told the company’s boss to publically warn people that their website was directing people to the pharmacy.
Using traffic footage agents Ryan and Mundo were able to figure out where Paul had gone to pick up drugs to mail on behalf of the pharmacy. Through detective work Daniel found Randall Fung, who was also involved in the distribution of the medication. The agents went there and arrested Fung. He turned out to be the chemist behind creating the medication that killed Carl. Detective Sifter ran into the head of the company that had posted the ads and Sifter told the man to apologize to the public.
It was determined that Paul and Randall had been using an online casino to get their destructive ads on the internet to target innocent people and get them to buy drugs they didn’t need that ended up being placebo pills anyway.
Agent Ryan told Sifter she needed $250,000 to go on the poker site and tempt Randall and Paul to fall into her trap so she could prove they were involved in illegal activities. Ryan told Daniel and Nelson about her plan to trap the hacker in this case. She then took the $250,000 and used it to order drugs from the Canadian pharmacy. All of a sudden the hacker placed a $250,000 bet at the online casino Paul and Randall had been using.
While the target was playing at the online casino the team tried to track him down and stop him, but they were unsuccessful. They then found out where the target’s bank was located and that meant they would be able to find and apprehend him.
The target then went to his bank and closed out the account because he knew the FBI was on to him. After closing the account he left the bank in a hurry, shoving people out of his way. However, agents Mundo and Ryan were there to apprehend him. They identified the man as Shawn Morris and said that the last laugh was on him now that he had been caught. Afterwards the team went to a bar to celebrate having caught Morris. They determined Morris had been an experienced black hat hacker.
The website that carried the fraudulent ad was on the news and the head of the company went to the media to tell them that from now on the company was going to help protect web users from coming across and clicking on harmful ads on their website and other websites as well.