Ukraine national held for largest credit card fraud

NEW DELHI:

A Ukraine national wanted by the US in the largest credit card fraud ever was arrested by CBI at the Indira Gandhi International airport on Saturday. Sergey Storchak hacked into accounts and sold information of over 40 million credit and debit card numbers.

Storchak and 10 other cyber criminals, belonging to various nationalities, have been accused of carrying out what the US department of justice calls the "single largest and most complex identity theft case ever". The international fraud involves 3 Americans, 2Ukrainians, 2 Chinese, 1 Estonian, 1 Belarusian and an unidentified suspect known only by his online nickname "Delpiero"

"Storchak, facing a Red Corner Notice, was taken into custody the moment he arrived from Goa on Saturday night," a CBI official said. Airport security personnel identified him and handed him over to the CBI Interpol team.

The information on storchak's movement was passed on to CBI by FBI in the US, the spokesperson said, adding, "storchak had planned to take a Sunday morning flight to Istanbul... He was produced before a magistrate and has been remanded to judicial custody till May22."


Modus operandi

• Storchak and 10 other hackers entered into the networks of major us retailers, including Barnes and Noble, OfficeMax, DSW and Sports Authority

• Once Inside their networks, they left "sniffer programmes" that copied credit and debit card numbers, passwords and account info. This data was stored in encrypted servers.

• The accused then sold this info to other criminals online or made duplicate debit cards after encoding info on them and withdrew millions of dollars from ATMs.