All the suspects are believed to be involved in payment card information trafficking

Jun 27, 2012 07:07 GMT  ·  By

A number of 24 individuals suspected of “carding” crimes have been arrested as a result of what the authorities call “the largest coordinated international law enforcement action in history,” aimed at those who traffic stolen banking details and other sensitive information.

11 of the suspects have been apprehended by US authorities and the other 13 by law enforcement organizations from seven different countries.

The undercover operation, which spanned over a time period of two years, involved 13 countries, including The United States, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Norway, Japan, Bosnia, Australia, Canada, Denmark and Germany.

Here are the names of some of the suspects: Christian Cangeopol, aka 404myth, Mark Caparelli, or Cubby, Sean Harper, aka Kabraxis314, Alex Hatala known as Kool+Kake, Joshua Hicks, aka Oxidedox, Mir Islam, who is apparently UGNazi’s JoshTheGod, Ali Hassan, known on the hacking scene as Badoo, and Lee Jason Juesheng, aka Jason Kato. All the arrested individuals were found by authorities to traffic stolen credit card details and other sensitive information on forums dedicated to such activities.

The members of the UGNazi collective claimed to have been arrested a couple of times in the past, but they were set free shortly and there wasn’t any evidence to prove the fact that they were truly apprehended.

Now, it’s official and JoshTheGod, arrested in Manhattan, New York, will have a lot of explaining to do since he is suspected of trafficking information obtained from more than 50,000 credit cards. He is also believed to be the founder of carders.org, a forum specialized in carding activities.

Authorities also seized the hacker group’s web server on which ugnazi.com was hosted and confiscated the domain name carders.org.

Another celebrity that shows up on the list of arrested individuals is Mr Badoo, the hacker famous for breaching the Facebook page that encouraged users to post drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, considered a blasphemy by many Muslims.

If found guilty, both of them may spend more than 20 years in prison.

According to the FBI’s estimates, this operation has prevented a total loss of more than $205 million (161 million EUR). Authorities have also notified the providers of 411,000 compromised credit and debit cards and have alerted a number of organizations to the fact that they have suffered data breaches.