Russian Security Services Track Down Colossal Credit Card Fraud Ring

Russian Security Services (RSB) has tracked down and charged an international credit card fraud ring arresting 25 accused. The carding kingpin is suspected to be linked with dozens of carding shops and with some of the most significant data breaches plaguing the Western World. FSB, the Russian Federal System, issued a statement this week stating they arrested 25 individuals accused of circulating illegal means of payment tied with around 90 websites that sold stolen credit cards. Though the FSB did not release a list of names, a blog LiveJournal by cybersecurity blogger Andrey Sporov leaked the details of the raid and exposed that the infamous hacker Alexey Stroganov, who goes by the hacker names “Flint” and “Flint24” was also among the arrested.

According to Intel 471, a cyber intelligence firm Stroganov is with some of the major cyber threats since 2001. Stroganov and his associate Gerasim Silivanon (a.k.a. “Gaborik “) were also sentenced to six years of imprisonment in Russia in 2006 but were out in two years. “Our continuous monitoring of underground activity revealed despite the conviction, Flint24 never left the cybercrime scene,” reads an analysis by Intel 471. “You can draw your conclusions [about why he was released early],” Sporaw wrote, hinting at the use of unfair means to get out of jail early. Flint is one of the big players of the stolen credit card market, working as a wholesaler of credit card data with cyber crooks who bought these cards from him in bulk – 100,000 pieces at once.

Various cyber forums say that Stroganov and his guys were caught because they broke “the golden rule” of hackers from Soviet countries- never target your country people or bank. Flint’s “Trust Your Client” These carding sites had a standard scheme they supported to earn trust and loyalty from those who bought these stolen cards. This system allowed their customers to get instant refunds on bad cards without proving that the tickets were canceled by the bank before they could be used. So, these sites installed money-back insurance called “checkers,” which can be used by their customers to check the cards (accessible only for a few minutes of buying the tickets) by giving extra money, few cents per card. But slowly, it was claimed that these checkers gave inaccurate results to benefit the card shops.

So, Flint and his gang came up with a policy “Trust your client,” through which if the customer claimed that the card was fraudulent, they would get a refund no question asked but only within six hours of buying the ticket. But they probably had their checkers too for checking bad cards.