Incidents

This guy earned 1 million USD from ATM hacking of 500 bank accounts

A Romanian citizen was sentenced to 65 months in prison for operating a payment card fraud scheme using an attack variant known as “skimming“. According to experts in IT systems audit, the defendant and his accomplices stole more than $850k USD, emptying the bank accounts of more than 500 people.

Bogdan Viorel Rusu, 38 years old, will also be
required to comply with five years of freedom under the supervision of the law
once he gets out of prison, plus he must pay a compensation of about $440k USD.

Rusu was arrested at the end of 2016 and has
remained in custody since his arrest. Finally, the Romanian citizen pleaded
guilty to various charges last September, including conspiracy to commit bank
fraud and aggravated identity theft.

According to specialists in IT systems audit, a
surveillance camera detected an individual installing a tiny camera and a
device to clone the cards (skimmer) in an ATM
located in the state of Massachusetts, approximately in August 2014.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents
claim that Rusu was identified thanks to the photographs he himself presented
in his asylum on U.S. territory application, in addition to the Agency’s
investigation work.

The recording shows that the skimming device
and the camera are connected to the cashier around 16:00 hours; A few hours
later, around 20:00 a different individual approaches the cashier to take the
camera and the skimmer. According to bank data, about 80 customers used the ATM
during this time period and, time after, twelve of those customers reported
losses for about $8.4k USD. The next day Rusu repeated the same operation,
managing to extract more than $9K USD.

There are several types of skimming devices
and, according to experts in IT systems audit from the International Institute
of Cyber Security (IICS), Rusu and his accomplices used a very easy to detect
for the authorities, because it is necessary that the Fraudsters install the
devices physically in the cashier, plus they must return to the crime scene to
collect the stolen information.    

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