Category Archives: Bulgaria

U.S. busts Romanian cybercrime ring that phished Americans, laundered millions of dollars

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U.S. authorities on Thursday announced the indictment of 20 people and the extradition of a dozen in a big bust of an organized cybercrime ring in Romania. The defendants are accused of being part of an online auction scheme that defrauded Americans of millions of dollars. The racket involved advertising nonexistent cars and other purportedly valuable items on Craigslist and eBay and tricking victims into paying for them, often using stolen identities. The fraudsters then allegedly laundered their ill-gotten gains via cryptocurrency, the Department of Justice said in a statement. In a separate, cyber-focused indictment unsealed Thursday, one of the defendants, Adrian Mitan, is accused of phishing for customers’ credit and debit card information, breaching U.S. companies, and then doing a brute-force attack on point-of-sale systems to extract more card data. The 24-year-old Romanian allegedly told American money launderers to set up credit and debit card accounts with the stolen […]

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Suspected Russian cybercriminal arrested in Bulgaria at U.S. request, lawyer says

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Bulgarian authorities last week arrested an accused Russian cybercriminal based on an Interpol warrant that originated with prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York, a lawyer familiar with the case told CyberScoop. Alexander Zhukov, a Russian national, was apprehended by police after he was indicted in absentia by U.S. prosecutors, according to Arkady Bukh, a New York-based attorney with a history of representing suspected hackers from Eastern Europe. Bukh now is in negotiations to represent Zhukov, he said Wednesday. Prosecutors accused Zhukov of affiliate fraud, Bukh said. Affiliate fraud typically involves artificially inflating internet traffic to defraud marketers, charging advertisers for access to website visitors who don’t exist. “There is widespread fraud from huge amounts of traffic getting directed through botnets,” said Bukh, describing the rise of ad fraud in general. “Before, it was boys and girls in Russia sitting in boiler rooms clicking manual clicks in order to get […]

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Europol busts global ATM skimmer network

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Europol arrested four members of a global criminal network allegedly responsible for placing ATM skimmers around European cities and then cashing out on the other side of the world, the international law enforcement agency announced on Thursday. The arrests mark the end of a two-year investigation that spanned the entire European continent as well as South America and Asia. All four arrested men are Bulgarian nationals, Europol said. ATM skimmers are a common tool used by criminals to steal bank account information from unwitting ATM users. The devices are essentially man-in-the middle attacks that catch account information when people dip their cards. Skimmers are often invisible to the eye and extremely easy to make and use. “Years ago it took someone with knowledge and skills to build a credit card skimmer,” Nate Seidle, CEO of the open source electronics firm SparkFun, explained earlier this year. “Now criminals are buying these off the […]

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