How do the bad guys “make a fortune?” Isn’t this against the law? Can’t they be found?
They use automated programs called bots, which collect information from infected computers.
Many of those infected computers will have financial information, like bank accounts, credit cards, stocks and bonds, or anything else that you can think of that is defined as financial information.
If your computer gets infected, it will send that information to whomever is collecting it and they will proceed to raid bank accounts or use credit card information or even use insider trading information to get rich.
They can be caught, but it takes a lot of time and effort to go through IP addresses and hope the criminals didn’t have time to erase their tracks or be traced to a country like China, Iran, or Russia where they really can’t be touched.