US Dismantles Russian Cybercriminal Network Running Stolen Credit Card Trade
U.S. law enforcement officials have dismantled a Russian cyber criminal network running global stolen credit card trade.
The U.S. government, in collaboration with partners in Germany and Austria, took down the websites of Try2Check, the primary service offering “card-checking” to cybercriminals in the stolen credit card trade.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged the Russian national who was running the netowrk.
A four-count indictment unsealed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York charged Denis Gennadievich Kulkov with access device fraud, computer intrusion and money laundering in connection with his operation of Try2Check,
Concurrently, the Department of State announced a reward offer of up to $10 million for information leading to Kulkov’s arrest and/or conviction for transnational organized crime. It also announced a second reward offer of up to $1 million for information leading to the identification of any other key leaders of Try2Check.
The State Department said that any information regarding these reward offers should be directed to the United States Secret Service at [email protected].
Kulkov currently resides in Russia, according to it. If convicted, he faces 20 years’ imprisonment.
Try2Check is one of the most visible and popular credit card checking services in the cybercrime underworld. The platform offers its users the ability to quickly determine the validity of a stolen credit card number, either singly or in bulk, and to know what percentage of the cards were valid and active. Users can upload thousands of card numbers at a time and receive an immediate report of which numbers are valid. Since 2013, the Try2Check platform has facilitated tens of millions of dollars in losses through credit card fraud each year.
As alleged in the indictment and other court filings, Kulkov created Try2Check in 2005, building it into a primary tool of the illicit credit card trade. Cybercriminals who acquired large batches of stolen credit cards (for example, by hacking into credit card readers at stores) ran the cards through Try2Check to determine what percentage of the stolen credit card numbers remained active. These cybercriminals then used the resulting data to show prospective buyers of the stolen credit card numbers what percentage of the cards retained their value. Try2Check victimized not only credit card issuers and holders, but also a major U.S.-based payment processing company whose systems Try2Check misused to perform the card checks.
Try2Check ran tens of millions of credit card checks per year and supported the operations of major card shops that made hundreds of millions in bitcoin in profits.
The U.S. Secret Service New York Field Office investigated this case with crucial assistance from the following Secret Service offices: the Global Investigative Operations Center (GIOC), the Cyber Investigative Section (CIS), Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, and the Hague.
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