As the economy falters (to put it mildly), online crime is attracting talented, yet unemployed, computer and IT professionals.

Economic Bust, Cybercrime Boom - Forbes

As the financial crisis spreads from the U.S. to other parts of the world, it will likely drive more laid-off employees into the Eastern European and Russian cybercriminal economy, says Scott Borg, director and chief economist at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit organization that acts as a go-between for the private sector and government on cybersecurity issues. Borg says he's spoken with local government officials about "identifiable pockets of engineers" that are migrating from legitimate computer work to the Internet underworld. "These are talented computer scientists, people who expected to be in positions of prestige, but are now unemployed without prospects, basically let down by their system."