The Russian Federal Security Service Arrested 25 Card Theft Ring Members

• The Russian police have raided the locations of 25 people who were operating an international carding scheme.
• Some of the arrested individuals are notorious actors who have been sentenced before.
• The police seized large amounts of money, guns, drugs, and computer equipment.

The Russian authorities have arrested 25 people accused of operating an international credit card theft ring. The group was using at least 90 websites to sell the credit card data that they had managed to steal from various sources, moving hundreds of millions of dollars through BTC-e and other cryptocurrency exchange platforms. While the Federal Security Service hasn’t published any names yet, the local media are presenting a list containing the names of the notorious cybercriminals Alexey Stroganov (a.k.a. "Flint24"/"Flint") and Gerasim Selivanov (a.k.a. “Gabrik”).

“Flint” was one of the most prolific darknet actors of the last decade. He was directly or indirectly involved in almost any significant credit card data heist, even in those that targeted Russians. Some claim that this is precisely why the Russian authorities finally arrested the man, as the group was causing problems to Russian banks, violating the “golden rule” of not targeting your own nation. Flint and associate Gabrik were both arrested for similar reasons in 2006, and while they had received a sentence of six years, they managed to walk out of jail after just two years into their sentence. The U.S. authorities had the man under the radar for a long time now, monitoring his online activity and trying to take down to numerous carding sites tied to his group, like "MrWhite[.]biz".

Some of the carding websites that are involved in this law enforcement action include BingoDumps, DumpsKindgom, GoldenDumps, HoneyMoney, and HustleBank. All of these platforms were selling cards in bulk while allowing the “customer” to ask for refunds in case they received invalid entries. This refund policy offered a time window of a couple of hours for whole dumps or an hour for individual CVVs, and it was put in place to help establish a form of trust. Of course, the crooks also run their own background checks on the cards that were for sale, so dishonest customers who tried to cheat them had their requests disregarded.

Source: Krebs On Security

The simultaneous police raids resulted in the seizure of 1 million US dollars, 3 million rubles, various computer and server equipment parts, fake IDs, fake Russian passports, rifles, gold bars, collectible coins, and drugs. The charges that the 25 individuals face now concern the various articles of the Russian Criminal Code, so it is very likely that many of them will receive imprisonment sentences. Stroganov appealed the charges yesterday, so the case handled by Judge Olga Zatomskaya in Tverskoy High Court is well underway.