Pierluigi Paganini
February 08, 2018
The US authorities have taken down a global cybercrime organization, the Justice Department announced indictments for 36 people charged with being part of a crime ring specialized in stealing and selling credit card and personal identity data.
According to the DoJ, the activities of the ring tracked as ‘Infraud Organization’, caused $530 million in losses. The group is active since 2010, when it created in Ukraine by Svyatoslav Bondarenko.
Bondarenko remains at large, but Russian co-founder Sergey Medvedev has been arrested by the authorities.
Most of the crooks were arrested in the US (30), the remaining members come from Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Kosovo, and Serbia.
The indicted leaders of the organization included people from the United States, France, Britain, Egypt, Pakistan, Kosovo, Serbia, Bangladesh, Canada and Australia.
The motto of the Infraud Organization was “In Fraud We Trust,” it has a primary role in the criminal ecosystem as a “premier one-stop shop for cybercriminals worldwide,” explained the Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Rybicki.
“As alleged in the indictment, Infraud operated like a business to facilitate cyberfraud on a global scale,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan.
The platform offered a privileged aggregator for criminals (10,901 approved “members” in early 2017) that could buy and sell payment card and personal data.
“Members ‘join the Infraud Organization via an online forum. To be granted
membership, an Infraud Administrator must approve the request. Once granted
membership, members can post and pay for advertisements within the Infraud forum. Members may move up and down the Infraud hierarchy.” said the indictment.
“The Infraud Organization continuously screens the wares and services of the vendors within the forum to ensure quality products. Vendors who are considered subpar are swiftly identified and punished by the Infraud Organization’s Administrators.”
The Infraud Organization used a number of websites to commercialize the data, it implemented a classic and efficient e-commerce for the stolen card and personal data, implementing also a rating and feedback system and an escrow” service for payments in digital currencies like Bitcoin.
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(Security Affairs – Infraud Organization, cybercrime)
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