US authorities have charged 11 people from five countries with stealing tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers from major retailers in one of the largest identity-theft schemes on record.
The scheme originated with a Miami man - a one-time government informant - who drove around Miami with a laptop computer looking to hack into wireless networks, authorities said. It ended with consumers, retailers and banks losing tens of millions of dollars due to fraudulent transactions.
The US Attorney in Boston said the ring stole 41 million credit and debit card numbers from retailers TJX Corporation, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 and DSW.
TJX was the hardest hit - acknowledging last year that data from 45.7 million credit cards was stolen from its computers.
Three people from the United States, three from the Ukraine, two from China, one from Estonia and one from Belarus were all charged. An 11th defendant was not identified.
The ring, which authorities said was headed by Albert Gonzalez - who invited a co-conspirator to live rent-free in his Miami apartment in exchange for his help with the scheme - hacked into retailers' computer networks to steal the data, which was stored on computer servers in the United States and Eastern Europe.
The fraudsters sold the numbers to people in the US and Europe for thousands of dollars. The buyers then withdrew tens of thousands of dollars at a time from automated teller machines, officials said.
Authorities did not know the total amount of money stolen, but Michael Sullivan, the US Attorney in Boston, said it was in the "tens of millions of dollars."
Mr Gonzalez, being held by New York authorities on another computer hacking charge, was charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, access-device fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy.
He was working as an informant in a separate US Secret Service hacking investigation when authorities learned he was using information from their inquiry to help fellow hackers avoid arrest, authorities said.
Reuters