Secret Service busts online organized crime ring

The undercover operation nabbed 28 individuals involved in ID theft

By Dan Verton

October 28, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - In what it called an "Information Age undercover investigation," the U.S. Secret Service today announced that it has arrested 28 people from eight U.S. states and six countries allegedly involved in a global organized cybercrime ring.
Charges filed against the suspects include identity theft, computer fraud, credit card fraud and conspiracy.
The investigation, code-named Operation Firewall, resulted in what the Secret Service described as a significant disruption of organized criminal activity online that was targeting the financial infrastructure of the U.S. The suspects are alleged to have collectively trafficked in at least 1.7 million stolen credit card numbers.
Financial institutions have estimated their losses associated with the suspects targeted by the investigation to be more than $4.3 million.
"Led by the Secret Service Newark Field Office, investigators from nearly 30 domestic and foreign Secret Service offices and their global law enforcement counterparts have prevented potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in loss to the financial and hi-tech communities," Secret Service Director W. Ralph Basham said in a statement. "These suspects targeted the personal and financial information of ordinary citizens, as well as the confidential and proprietary information of companies engaged in e-commerce."
Operation Firewall began in July 2003 and quickly evolved into a transnational investigation of global credit card fraud and online identity theft. The underground criminal groups have been identified as Shadowcrew, Carderplanet and Darkprofits. The organizations operated Web sites used to traffic counterfeit credit cards and false identification information and documents. The groups allegedly used the sites to share information on how to commit fraud and sold the stolen information and the tools needed to commit such crimes.
International law enforcement organizations that took part in the investigation and arrests included the U.K.'s National Hi-Tech Crimes Unit, the Vancouver Police Department's Financial Crimes Section, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Europol.
Officials in Bulgaria, Belarus, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Ukraine also were involved.

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

POLL RESULTS

Leading IT Pros Weigh In on Top IT Issues

Accelerate your knowledge of the IT world you inhabit by viewing the results of a series of polls taken by your IT peers. These polls of 100+ IT professionals each are available for full viewing. They cover key topics such as virtualization, processor performance, green IT, cloud computing and many others. Be a part of the buzz.

WHITE PAPER

For Best Results, Think Beyond the Box

Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. Download now!

WHITE PAPER

Accelerating the Path to Demand Intelligence with a Demand Signal Repository

Utilizing demand intelligence improves the precision of pricing, product assortments, channel/store placement, and promotion, which are all essential for sustainable revenue management performance. Learn more, download this free whitepaper today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Centralized Data Backup and Your WAN
Is your organization prepared to tackle the massive challenge of protecting your data in a cost effective and timely manner? With a growing...

Why Compliance Pays
This OnDemand webcast explores the relationship that firms with best compliance records have higher revenue, greater customer retention, lower financial losses from data...

An All-in-One Approach to Web Security
Granting web access to employees poses challenges to IT administrators and introduces unique security risks. Even as companies have perfected their security techniques...

Best Practices for Managing Business Risks from the Use of IT
(Source: Symantec) Based on exhaustive benchmarks conducted by the IT Policy Compliance, this session highlights the relationship between business risks and use of...

The Hidden Dangers of Spam
Beyond the well-understood productivity drain that spam inflicts on businesses, threats posed by illicit email circulating through a network are causing many security...

Managing And Protecting Your Ever Increasing Mobile Assets
(Source: Absolute Software) Your users are becoming more mobile each day. This is great for productivity - yet challenging for IT control. Natalie...

Open Source Security Myths Dispelled
(Source: Astaro) Open Source Software is computer software whose source code is available to the general public. This openly viewable nature...

Sun OpenSSO Enterprise Webinar
(Source: Sun) This webinar replay discusses Sun OpenSSO Enterprise innovation--the single, open-source solution that helps your business solve the challenges around internal access...

Best Practices for Backing Up VMware® with Veritas NetBackup™
VMware® is used by enterprises large and small to increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their IT operations. With this in mind, Symantec...

Agile Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Rapid ROI
(Source: IBM) Content rich business processes are a core feature of daily operations at just about any organization today. Very often these essential...

All White Papers | All Webcasts