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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Charges filed in international $45 million heist |
| 2013-05-09 |
| (Reuters) - Individuals employed around the world by a sophisticated cyber crime ring stole $45 million from thousands of bank automated teller machines within a matter of hours, using hacked debit-card data, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday. Members of the global criminal organization hacked into two credit card processors and used stolen data to make more than 40,500 withdrawals in 27 countries, during two separate coordinated incidents in December 2012 and February 2013, the Justice Department said. "In the place of guns and masks, this cyber crime organization used laptops and the Internet. Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City, with the defendants fanning out across Manhattan to steal millions of dollars from hundreds of ATMs in a matter of hours," said US Attorney Loretta Lynch, whose office in Brooklyn, New York, brought the case. In the December attack, hackers gained access to an Indian credit card processor that handled prepaid Mastercard Inc debit cards for National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC, or RAKBANK, according to a criminal indictment. In February, the hackers broke into the system of a U.S.-based credit card processor to steal account numbers for prepaid Mastercard debit cards issued by Bank of Muscat, the indictment said. The second operation was far larger than the first attack, eventually totaling $40 million in losses to Bank of Muscat. No individual bank accounts were compromised by the scheme, Lynch said. Authorities said they arrested seven of the eight defendants, all U.S. citizens and residents of Yonkers, New York. They are Jael Mejia Collado, Joan Luis Minier Lara, Evan Jose Peña, Jose Familia Reyes, Elvis Rafael Rodriguez, Emir Yasser Yeje and Chung Yu-Holguin. The eighth defendant charged in the indictment, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Peña, also known as "Prime" and "Albertico," was murdered on April 27 in the Dominican Republic, according to prosecutors. Lynch said it was unclear whether the murder was related to the cybercrime case. Money like that could buy a lot of plane tickets and pressure cookers. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |