Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), announced today the largest coordinated international law enforcement action in history directed at “carding” crimes—offenses in which the Internet is used to traffic in and exploit the stolen credit card, bank account, and other personal identification information of hundreds of thousands of victims globally. Today’s coordinated action—involving 13 countries, including the United States—resulted in 24 arrests, including the domestic arrests of 11 individuals by federal and local authorities in the United States, and the arrests of 13 individualsabroad by foreign law enforcement in seven countries. In addition, the federal and local authoritiesand authorities overseas today conducted more than 30 subject interviews and executed more than 30 search warrants. Today’s coordinated actions result from a two-year undercover operation led by the FBI that was designed to locate cybercriminals, investigate and expose them, and disrupt their activities…
Background on Carding Crimes
“Carding” refers to various criminal activities associated with stealing personal identification information and financial information belonging to other individuals—including the account information associated with credit cards, bank cards, debit cards, or other access devices—and using that information to obtain money, goods, or services without the victims’ authorization or consent. For example, a criminal might gain unauthorized access to (or “hack”) a database maintained on a computer server and steal credit card numbers and other personal informationstored in that database. The criminal can then use the stolen information to, among other things, buy goods or services online; manufacture counterfeit credit cards by encoding them with thestolen account information; manufacture false identification documents (which can be used in turn to facilitate fraudulent purchases); or sell the stolen information to others who intend to use it for criminal purposes. Carding refers to the foregoing criminal activity generally and encompassesa variety of federal offenses, including, but not limited to, identification document fraud, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, computer hacking, and wire fraud….
Background on the Undercover Operation
In June 2010, the FBI established an undercover carding forum called “Carder Profit” (the “UCSite”), enabling users to discuss various topics related to carding and to communicate offers to buy,sell, and exchange goods and services related to carding, among other things. Since individualsengaged in these unlawful activities on one of many other carding websites on the Internet, the FBIestablished the UC Site in an effort to identify these cybercriminals, investigate their crimes, and prevent harm to innocent victims. The UC Site was configured to allow the FBI to monitor and to record the discussion threads posted to the site, as well as private messages sent through the site between registered users. The UC Site also allowed the FBI to record the Internet protocol (IP) addresses of users’ computers when they accessed the site. The IP address is the unique number that identifies a computer on the Internet and allows information to be routed properly between computers.
Detailed FBI Press release link: click here