Feds charge Vietnamese suspect with slurp’n’flog of half-a-million Americans’ ID data
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A Vietnamese man has been charged in connection with a long-running scam involving the theft and resale of what the DoJ rather hiply refers to as the “fullz”* (personal information) of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Hieu Minh Ngo, 24, a Vietnamese national, was hit with a total of 15 charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, substantive wire fraud, conspiracy to commit identity fraud, substantive identity fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, and substantive access device fraud, according to a Department of Justice statement on the case.
From 2007 until 2012 Ngo, allegedly operating under the alias “hieupc”, conspired with others to sell “personal information packages” of more than 500,000 people, according to prosecutors.
Many of these sales were carried out on carding forums or cybercrime marketplaces operated by the suspects, claims the DoJ. Higher prices were charged for more recently updated information, while the illegal trades also involved stolen payment card data, the Feds said. Payments for the illicit info was through a “digital currency service”.
Ngo was arrested upon his entry into the United States in February 2013. The charges, filed in November 2012, were unsealed on 18 October. The full indictment against Ngo can be found here (PDF).
Investigative blogger and cybercrime specialist Brian Krebs reports that the business was run through an underground service called Superget.info.
Krebs claims that cybercrooks posing as US-based private investigators bought the information which was later resold through Superget.info. Access was paid for via monthly wire transfers from Singapore, it is alleged. ®
* An individual’s “fullz”, according to a press release by the US Department of Justice, include their name, date of birth, social security number, bank account number and bank routing number.
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Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/22/id_fraud_data_brokering_charges/