Russian national pleads guilty in transnational cybercrime ring
Infraud Organization stole $568 million over 7 years, feds say
A Russian national pleaded guilty before a federal judge in Nevada Friday to his role in a $568 million transnational cybercrime ring.
Sergey Medvedev, who also went by the names “Stells,” “segmed” and “serjbear,” was one of the leaders of a group called the Infraud Organization, according to the Department of Justice.
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Infraud was a large-scale criminal enterprise based online that was involved in the acquisition, sale and distribution of stolen identities, debit and credit card numbers and other personal and financial information, authorities said. The group used the slogan, “In Fraud We Trust.”
The group was a major player in the practice called “carding,” or using counterfeit or stolen credit card information to buy retail items online, authorities said. Its members directed buyers to vending sites for the stolen information, malware and other illegal items. Infraud even provided an escrow service to facilitate digital currency transactions for illegal sales.
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The group has more than 10,000 registered members as of March 2017, authorities said. The organization attempted $2.2 billion in losses from 2010 to 2017, and actually caused $568 million in losses to “a wide swath of financial institutions, merchants and private individuals.”
Federal authorities busted the organization in 2018. Indictments charged 36 alleged members of the group on racketeering charges and authorities arrested 13 of them in six countries.