Carding: the trend gives no hope
Date: March 21, 2005Source: Computer Crime Research Center
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Plastic cards market grows ever-increasingly. Average pace of increase is 20-22% annually. The boom appeared after banks launched so-called salary projects that facilitated the process of getting salaries and companies applied it. At the same time the level of plastic crimes also increased.
Credit cards became of broad use, they replace usual paper money. Counterfeit of credit cards, computer-facilitated thefts got a character of real disaster in the USA, Italy and other developed countries. Companies, especially banks, intend to hide facts of computer theft because they are afraid of loosing their reputation and trust of their depositors. Thus, the scale of losses in bank sphere are not registered in official statistics. And defrauded victims more often even do not suspect that they have been robbed. Experts regard criminal theft to be fourfold greater with help of computers than in cases of armed robberies of banks in the USA. For the last decade annual losses have increased more than 20 times and came to tens of billions of US dollars.
In April 2003, three young men with help of cunning device stole more than $ 700 thousand from Moscow ATMs. Small device is a unique invention of three students of technical universtities, their proudness and source of income. At that revenue is more than significant as you can see.
This device allowed to withdraw all money from other's credit cards. It is attached to the slot where the card is plugged in. It is firmly attached to the ATM, is painted in similar color and attracts no attention. At the same time it reads all data from the card when victim is trying to get some money. And placed nearby video cam recorded Pin code. Afterwards three students obtained almost unlimited access to the other's bank account.
Then with help of the purchased for this purpose equipment they made a replica of the card. And then they withdrew money usually in that ATM. According to preliminary estimation, the number of victims made up more than 200 people. They worked in Moscow downtown. These ATMs are placed in the crowded spots. In order to arrest them police had to carry out prepared operation.
Law enforcement officers of Odessa police department arrested three young men attempting to illegally withdraw a big sum of money from ATM with the help of counterfeit plastic cards. Malefactors repeatedly withdrew big sums from accounts using access to accounts of one of the foreign banks, managed to steal more than a half million USD. "Hackers" withdrew 10-40 thousand USD from accounts of their victims at once. A criminal case was initiated by fact of fraud. 61 counterfeit cards, 135 blanks, more than 20 thousand USD and more than 20 thousand UAH were seized from swindlers during search. Law enforcement also seized a device designed to plot information to magnetic streaks of the cards.
Suspects were charged with a huge theft (article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and illegal actions with documents and payment cards to access bank accounts (article 200 of the Criminal Code)
According to UNIAN information agency, July 2003, a criminal case concerning Ukrainians that were related to the international criminal group of carders was brought to the investigation department of the Office of Public Prosecutor in Odessa region from police, First Deputy Prosecutor Mikhail Cherny informed.
He said that due to unusual character of this case, and also due to the fact that some law enforcement officers were under suspicion, investigation of this case would be conducted by the Office of Public Prosecutor.
Because of investigation suspects' names and size of damage brought by money withdrawals from ATMs of Privatbank, Aval and Citibank are not announced. At the moment law enforcement of Ukraine, Poland, Greece and Interpol are searching for the members of organized carder group, one of the chains of which were Odessa police officers .
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| 2005-07-31 15:29:12 - sehr gut Saite. Was machen Sie mein... Hans Millard |
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