Internet fraudster faces 37 years in prison
Belarussian citizen Dmitry Naskovets, who was arrested in the Czech Republic on charges of Internet fraud at the request of the FBI, pleaded guilty, said Prosecutor of the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara.
Naskovets admitted all counts before the main judge, Henry Pitman, he said.
According to investigators, in 2007, Naskovets and his associates created a website that provided services to online fraudsters using stolen bank data and credit card numbers. The Belarusians picked up the natives of English-speaking countries and Germany, who pretended to be real clients or clients in telephone conversations with banks that tried to clarify or block suspicious transactions.
With their help, over 5,000 fraudulent transactions were committed that caused damage to American and European financial institutions, the prosecutor said.
The created website CallService.biz for Internet fraudsters, which was widely advertised on the Internet, provided its “services” to more than two thousand people. This was stated by the creators of the service for Internet thieves in their advertisements on the website CardingWorld.cc created by them.
The United States initiated the extradition of Naskovets arrested in the Czech Republic. According to the laws of the United States, he faces a sentence of up to 37 and a half years. The prosecutor ranked the fraudulent services system created as “particularly dangerous” because it was directed against the security system of banks.
The sentence to the 26-year-old Belarusian will be announced on May 26.
An international group of Internet fraudsters revealed in Belarus
In the course of operational search activities, employees of the High-Tech Crime Detection Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior identified and denounced an international group of Internet fraudsters. It consisted of citizens of Russia, Moldova and Belarus.
As the head of the Information and Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus, Ekaterina Samusenkova-Shelegova, reported, the attackers, using the capabilities of the global computer network, stole money and material values, presumably for hundreds of thousands of US dollars. Among the victims were online stores, foreign banks, as well as dozens of citizens from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and other countries.
To make it difficult to search and expose, criminals have developed a complex multi-step scheme for conducting their operations across several countries. It is known that they have been engaged in their illegal business for the past few years. And each of them had its own specialization. According to experts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on the territory of our republic such a scheme was revealed for the first time.
The result of the painstaking work of management staff, their colleagues from the Vitebsk region and representatives of the main preliminary investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was the detention of four representatives of the criminal syndicate, including one of its organizers, on the territory of Minsk and Vitebsk regions. An expensive computer, photo and video equipment acquired in US online stores using stolen money from bank accounts of foreign citizens has been seized from them.
A criminal case was initiated under the article “theft with the use of computer equipment”, which provides for punishment in the form of imprisonment up to 10 years with or without confiscation of property.
Currently, relevant requests have been sent to the law enforcement agencies of a number of states. In respect of the suspects, a complex of investigative measures and investigative actions is being carried out.
