3 Charged in International Attack on Banks

Two U.S. men and a Russian face conspiracy and bank fraud charges for allegedly running a successful scheme to compromise online banking and brokerage accounts and help themselves to the cash.

In a 15-month-long caper that ended in December of last year, prosecutors say Alexander Bobnev, of Volgograd, worked with others in Russia to infect U.S. consumers with Trojan horses that let the gang swipe the victims' login credentials.

Bobnev then initiated wire transfers from the hacked bank accounts -- and liquidated stocks from compromised brokerage accounts -- and channeled the money to "drop" accounts in the U.S., according to federal indictments (.pdf) filed last week in Manhattan.

Opening the drop accounts and pulling out the cash was allegedly the job of Aleksey Volynskiy, of Manhattan, and Alexey Mineev from Hampton, New Hampshire, who got to keep a portion of the loot for their efforts, according (.pdf) to the government.

The scheme unraveled when the feds cultivated an informant in scheme in Poughkeepsie, New York. In June of last year, the informant gave the gang the routing number for a new drop account to send stolen funds into -- in actuality, the account was under law enforcement's control, and the feds watched as it received transfers of $15,400 and $4,700 from two hacked Charles Schwab trading accounts.

The informant then met with Volynskuy in Manhattan to give him half of the $4,700, according to the indictments.

The three are charged with conspiracy, and Volynskuy faces two additional count of access device fraud for allegedly giving the informant 150 stolen credit card numbers last year to get them programmed onto counterfeit cards.

Across the country in Los Angeles, seven people face charges for a series of bank heists that relied on social engineer attacks aimed at credit card customers of Chase Bank.

In a 44-count indictment (.pdf) handed down Tuesday, Arutyun Sarkisyan, Ara Sarkisyan, Asmik Sarkisyan, Giyosiddin Nizomov, Alexandr Moshkov, Bunyod Sharipov, and Parunak Tukmanyan are charged with phoning Chase customer service to have themselves added to customer charge card accounts from April through July of this year.

They then allegedly used the plastic to run up thousands of dollars in charges at high-end retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue, and to pull dozens of cash advances from Los Angeles ATMs at $5,000 a pop. They're charged with access device fraud, bank fraud and identity theft.

Also in California, three naturalized U.S. citizens are accused of setting up a front company to buy third-generation night vision goggles and illegally export them to Vietnam.

Dan Tran Dang, Liem Duc Huynh and George Kgoc Bui allegedly (.pdf) set up a Huntington Beach company called Professional Security for the sole purchase of buying the coveted AN/PVS-7 image intensifiers, made by ITT. The goggles, which retail for about $2,300, are classified as "defense articles" by the U.S. government, and can't legally be exported to Vietnam without a license from the State Department.

From October 2003 to February 2005, the three allegedly ordered at least 55 units from Win-Tron, a U.S. supplier, claiming they were for domestic use only, then smuggled them to Vietnam in their luggage, shipping the head straps and helmet mounts separately in the mail. They're charged with a single count of conspiracy to violate export laws.

In an update to the our murder-for-hire text messaging item, Robin Berry writes in to say she was never friends with convicted plotter Tonia Mullins. Mullins, you'll recall, turned to Berry in a thwarted effort to commission a hit on her Army lover's wife, authoring a string of incriminating text messages that Berry then turned over to the feds. We reported that a confidential informant brought the plot to the attention of police in the first place; Berry says that's her.

"I am not nor have I aver been a friend of Tonia Mullins," she writes. "I turned her in to the police because [neither] she, nor anyone else for that matter, has the right to decide for a baby girl that she no longer needs her mother alive in her life."

Fed Blotter is Threat Level's weekly roundup of computer crime cases in the federal courts. If you've been indicted, or are about to be, please let us know.

Images: Charles Schwab building courtesy TheTruthAbout; AN/PVS-7 courtesy Federation of American Scientists

By Kevin Poulsen December 05, 2008 | Categories: Fed Blotter