11 people in the U.S., the UK and Vietnam were arrested for organizing a criminal group that was engaged in theft of credit card data. The fraudsters managed to steal about $ 200 million.
The operation was carried out by the Vietnamese High-Tech Crime Unit (HTCU) and the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam (MPSVN), SOCA, the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit and the FBI.
“One of the world’s major facilitation networks for online card fraud has been dismantled by this operation, and those engaged in this type of crime should know that that they are neither anonymous, nor beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies,” says the official statement.
The fraudsters created the site «mattfeuter», which was available for users around the world. The portal had approximately 16,000 members, who managed to sell about 1.1 million credit cards. Once logged on the portal, the users indicate the number and type of credit card data they wish to receive. The site also contained a tool that allowed to verify the authenticity of data, which was sold on the site.
8 of 11 people were arrested in Vietnam. Presumably, they were the administrators of the site. Three others were arrested in the UK.
The operation remains ongoing; SOCA and PCeU are undertaking activity targeting the wider membership of mattfeuter.ru. Further arrests are anticipated.
