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U.S. Govt. Appears To Have Nabbed Kurupt.su Carding Kingpin
tsu doh nimh writes "The Justice Department on Monday announced the arrest of a Dutch man wanted for coordinating the theft of roughly 44,000 credit card numbers. The government hasn't released many details about the accused, except for his name and hacker handle, 'Fortezza.' But data from a variety of sources indicates that Fortezza was a lead administrator of Kurupt.su, a large, recently-shuttered forum dedicated to carding and Internet fraud. Krebsonsecurity.com provides some background on Fortezza, who 'claimed to be "quitting the scene," but spoke often about finishing a project with which he seemed obsessed: to hack and plunder all of the other carding forums.'"
Just looked him up on Spokeo. Already updated to show him in jail. wow!
RTFA, Krebs almost seems sympathetic for the guy.
I don't care much for the whole extradition-to-the-US thing, but this is not your average whitehat/greyhat hacker, highlighting security issues by breaking systems, or for the lulz.
This is card skimming pond scum, doing it for profit. Good riddance, I say.
Interestingly enough, it was a restaurant owner in Seattle who tipped the feds off, after angry customers contacted him about additional $70-90 charges on their checks. So yeah, he was really sticking it to the banks.
It's certainly not victimless: any merchant who doesn't have insurance is getting screwed by the fraudster, any merchant who does have insurance (because of all the credit card fraud) is getting screwed by the insurance company.
Your numbers are also off - good credit card numbers can go for $30 - $45 depending on the type of card and where it's from:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/06/16/137181702/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-the-credit-card-black-market
and the idea that a guy working in a restaurant would do this... Well, if he was very stupid then maybe. But he'd get caught in no time once this restaurant was identified as a common point of use between all these stolen cards.
It was credit card fraud. The only people that lose are the shops who take credit cards and maybe a few rich people who don't check their statements.
If the banks were losing out from this though would change the credit card system.
I had my card stolen (or at least, it was caught) while I was away on a business trip in a foreign country. I sort of got it resolved, but after a marathon phone session (which I got to pay for!), and countless other little inconveniences. That inconvenience and wasted time has to count for something.
If there was a more secure, but more annoying to use, credit card option, I'd jump to it in a heart beat. But since credit cards are effectively a monopoly, I have a choice of images to put on the card, and little else.