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As if any more evidence was needed that hacking has grown from a juvenile delinquent’s quest for attention to big-time crime, a report in EWeek has found that high-tech criminals using spyware have been victimizing discount brokerages on the order of tens of millions of dollars.

Earlier this month the SEC warned that hackers were taking over online brokerage accounts using remote locations. TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. revealed on Tuesday that they had become the latest brokerage to be scammed, costing them $4 million in the third quarter to restore customer accounts.

Even harder hit was E*Trade Financial Corp, which announced third quarter fraud losses of $18 million, which came from swindlers stealing clients’ identities and then manipulating their accounts.

Both brokerages guaranteed that their client fraud loses would be repaid, and both are ratcheting up their defenses.

"We've seen that level of fraud in the last three weeks or so reduced to almost zero as a result of the changes we're making," E*Trade CEO Mitchell Caplan said in last week's conference call. But Gwenn Bezard, an analyst with Boston-based consultant Aite Group, said E*Trade had previously made big efforts to bolster security and the $18 million increase was a sign of hackers' resiliency in flouting fraud prevention efforts.

Around 25 percent of U.S. retail stocks are traded online through roughly 10 million accounts, according to NASD. The identity theft usually occurs when a victim’s computer or public PC is loaded with a spy program that is able to capture vital keystroke information.

Said Gwenn Bezard, “It’s a reminder that though you may have stronger authentication it may not protect you from other types of scams.”

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