Study: $1.8 Billion In Reshipping Fraud With Stolen Cards Each Year

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara and others studied the economy of how criminals monetize stolen credit cards by operating reshipping scams as means to cash out, KrebsOnSecurity reports: "A time-honored method of extracting cash from stolen credit cards involves "reshipping" scams, which manage the purchase, reshipment and resale of carded consumer goods from America to Eastern Europe — primarily Russia. A new study suggests that some 1.6 million credit and debit cards are used to commit at least $1.8 billion in reshipping fraud each year, and identifies some choke points for disrupting this lucrative money laundering activity. [...] disrupting the reshipping chains of these scams has the potential to cripple the underground economy by affecting a major income stream of cybercriminals. By way of example, the team found that a single criminal-operated reshipping service can earn a yearly revenue of over 7.3 million US dollars, most of which is profit."

Comments

Re:Re-what?

[Firethorn]

Basically, there are many businesses in the USA who won't ship internationally for many reasons. Heck, some won't even ship to parts of the USA like Alaska (ask me how I know). Said reasons include customs difficulties, fraud, damage in transit, time, etc...
Thus, there's a market for 'reshippers'. People who accept packages on behalf of their clients and act as facilitators for international shipping. Good ones handle the customs requirements, any extra packaging, etc...

Thing is, they can be a bit like a pawn shop. You have legit ones, and you have ones that are more straight out fences.

Given the description, it sounds like they're ripe for some additional regulation.