Monday, November 10, 2008
Three Plead Guilty in Card Fraud
Ivan Biltse, Angelina Kitaeva and Yuriy Rakushchynets are three of ten suspects accused of using hacked ATM card numbers and stealing $2 million. While the cards were Citibank branded, they were actually owned by Cardtronics, of Houston, TX.
A Russian hacker accessed a server that processed transactions from 7-Eleven stores. He captured thousands of card numbers and corresponding PINs. These were sold for use by others. It is believed that 70 percent of the funds stolen were sent to Russia.
Citibank reported the breach to the FBI in February, 2008. The Secret Service was conducting a separate investigation and was then able to tie Rakushchynets to to the Citibank breach with ATM security camera videos.
Related arrests happened in January when Nue Quni and Luma Bitti were stopped for a traffic infraction and found to have blank cards and a magnetic stripe writer in their car. Bitti cooperated in the investigation, which lead to the arrests of Andrey Baranets and Aleksandr Desevoh. Aleksandar Aleksiev, one of the mules moving the card data, was arrested in May withdrawing money from an ATM. Ilya Boruch was been charged with money laundering for using Webmoney to transfer some of the proceeds to Russia.
Rakushchynets was also accused of participating in a two day cyberfraud scam which attacked iWire prepaid MasterCard accounts. ATM withdrawals around the world debited $5 million with 9,000 withdrawal attempts in just this two days.
Rakushchynets pleaded guilty to four charges, access device fraud, conspiracies to commit access device fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Kitvea plead guilty to conspiracy and access device fraud. Biltse plead guilty on October 21 to access device fraud, three counts of conspiracy, passport fraud and one charge of gaining residency status in the United States with a sham marriage.
Rakushchynets and Biltse will forfeit cash they still had. Rakushchynets had $838,000 Biltse had $912,500.
Citibank has said little about the breach. They stated that customers are not losing this money, their accounts will be made whole. Cardtronics maintains that their system is PCI compliant. There are those who question that and believe the data security standards have not been compromised.
It would seem that for many of today's bank robbers, the ATM is where the money is.
Ivan Biltse, Angelina Kitaeva and Yuriy Rakushchynets are three of ten suspects accused of using hacked ATM card numbers and stealing $2 million. While the cards were Citibank branded, they were actually owned by Cardtronics, of Houston, TX.
A Russian hacker accessed a server that processed transactions from 7-Eleven stores. He captured thousands of card numbers and corresponding PINs. These were sold for use by others. It is believed that 70 percent of the funds stolen were sent to Russia.
Citibank reported the breach to the FBI in February, 2008. The Secret Service was conducting a separate investigation and was then able to tie Rakushchynets to to the Citibank breach with ATM security camera videos.
Related arrests happened in January when Nue Quni and Luma Bitti were stopped for a traffic infraction and found to have blank cards and a magnetic stripe writer in their car. Bitti cooperated in the investigation, which lead to the arrests of Andrey Baranets and Aleksandr Desevoh. Aleksandar Aleksiev, one of the mules moving the card data, was arrested in May withdrawing money from an ATM. Ilya Boruch was been charged with money laundering for using Webmoney to transfer some of the proceeds to Russia.
Rakushchynets was also accused of participating in a two day cyberfraud scam which attacked iWire prepaid MasterCard accounts. ATM withdrawals around the world debited $5 million with 9,000 withdrawal attempts in just this two days.
Rakushchynets pleaded guilty to four charges, access device fraud, conspiracies to commit access device fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Kitvea plead guilty to conspiracy and access device fraud. Biltse plead guilty on October 21 to access device fraud, three counts of conspiracy, passport fraud and one charge of gaining residency status in the United States with a sham marriage.
Rakushchynets and Biltse will forfeit cash they still had. Rakushchynets had $838,000 Biltse had $912,500.
Citibank has said little about the breach. They stated that customers are not losing this money, their accounts will be made whole. Cardtronics maintains that their system is PCI compliant. There are those who question that and believe the data security standards have not been compromised.
It would seem that for many of today's bank robbers, the ATM is where the money is.
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