The Romanian criminal syndicate allegedly behind the largest credit card fraud in Australian history has been broken up by an international police force. Seven people in the eastern European country were charged in relation to a scheme that gained access to 500,000 Australian credit cards.
Approximately 30,000 cards were used for fraudulent transactions amounting to more than AUD30m (USD31m).
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Stolen credit card data was used by the syndicate to create false credit cards which enabled thousands of counterfeit transactions to be carried out in numerous locations from Europe to Hong Kong and the US.
No Australian cardholders lost money as a result of the fraudulent transactions as Australian financial institutions reimbursed any victims losses.
The Australian Federal Police’s manager for cyber crime operations, commander Glen McEwen, said: “This is the largest data breach investigation ever undertaken by Australian law enforcement. Without the cooperation of 13 other countries, along with Australia’s banking and finance sector, we would not have been able to track these illegal transactions to the criminal network in Romania. Today’s successful outcome is a culmination of 17 months of hard work with these partners.”
In June of this year the FBI made twelve arrests in relation to a scheme that hacked more than 400,000 credit card accounts.
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