The U.S. charged 36 people in a takedown of an international cybercrime ring that prosecutors say used the slogan “In Fraud We Trust” and stole $530 million with the help of pilfered identities and malware.
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the racketeering conspiracy along with the arrest of 13 people, eight of whom the government will seek to extradite from Australia, the U.K., France, Italy, Kosovo and Serbia. Five members of the group, known as the Infraud Organization, were arrested in the U.S.
“Today’s indictment and arrests mark one of the largest cyberfraud enterprise prosecutions ever undertaken by the Department of Justice,” said acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan. “Infraud operated like a business to facilitate cyberfraud on a global scale.”
Prosecutors in the case, which was unsealed in Nevada, allege that the group was created in October 2010 by Svyatoslav Bondarenko, a Ukranian who sought to create “the premier destination” for purchasing retail items on the internet with counterfeit or stolen credit card information.
The group’s members were directed to “vending” websites that served as conduits to traffic in stolen identities and banking information along with malware and other stolen illicit goods, prosecutors said. It also provided an escrow service to facilitate digital currency transactions among its members, according to the government.
