Romanian cybercrime group involved in massive money laundering scheme busted by US authorities

• The US authorities have ordered the extradition of members of an organized cybercrime group in Romania.
• The money laundering scheme defrauded many US citizens to a tune of a million dollars.

On Thursday, a Romanian cybercrime group which duped many Americans online, was busted by the US authorities. This group was involved in an online auction scheme which put out fake advertisements of high-value products on websites like Craigslist and eBay to lure people into buying them.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued an indictment related to this fraud. According to the indictment, one of the group’s members, Adrian Mitan was responsible for carrying out credit-card phishing and brute force attacks on POS systems to steal money from US-based victims.

“Mitan and his coconspirators phished for credit/debit card information (numbers, expiration dates, etc.). After obtaining this information, Mitan hacked into point-of-sale (POS) systems of American businesses and 'ran' thousands of credit/debit card purchases or balance inquiries in order to acquire the remaining codes necessary to extract funds from those cards,” the indictment stated.

The cybercrime group consisted of 20 persons. Among them, 15 were Romanian, one was Bulgarian and the other four were from California, Georgia, and Massachusetts.

As part of the phishing campaign, these members were touting to be either military officials or eBay employees to lure victims. So far, twelve of these 16 foreign nationals have been extradited to the US and are awaiting trials.