Hackers arrested in Russian credit-card fraud

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Posted at 11:46 a.m. PDT Friday, April 28, 2000

Suspected hackers arrested in Russian credit-card fraud MOSCOW (AP) -- Police arrested five suspected hackers accused of stealing credit card numbers from Internet retailers and pocketing more than $630,000, according to a news report Friday.

The group, operating from December through April, stole numbers from more than 5,400 cards belonging to Russians and foreigners, police said, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The 22-year-old alleged mastermind of the scheme registered an Internet retailer called ``Politshop'' and made an agreement with a Moscow bank for handling credit-card transactions, the report said.

Other members of the group allegedly cracked the systems of genuine Internet retailers, stole the credit card numbers of their customers and made bogus purchases from Politshop, thus moving money from the victims' banks to Politshop's accounts, the report said.

The report did not say what kinds of goods Politshop supposedly offered, or how the group was caught. Other suspects include a 19-year-old technical college student, 19-year-old and 22-year-old unemployed men, and a 40-year-old businessman, ITAR-Tass reported.

Hacker crimes are on the rise in Russia and last year included an attack on the state gas monopoly Gazprom, Interior Ministry Col. Konstantin Machabeli said earlier this week, according to the Interfax news agency.

Acting together with a Gazprom insider, hackers got past the huge company's security and temporarily seized control of the system regulating gas flows in pipelines, Machabeli said. He did not say if the hackers caused any damage.

Police registered more than 850 cases of computer crime in Russia in 1999, up twelvefold from the year before, the report said.

http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/039286.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 28, 2000

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