Internet-connected PCs.

How much money can criminals make scaring naive computer users? Try $5 million a year.

That is how much a marketing associate of one Russian operation appears to be earning from its sales of fake anti-virus software through an elaborate scheme that relies on e-mail spam and indirect control of thousands of unprotected PCs, according to internal company files posted online by a Russian hacker.

The company is Bakasoftware, a clandestine effort based in Russia that markets what it claims is an anti-virus program strictly to English-speaking computer users.