14 DAY TRIAL // An Estonian national has been charged and arrested for creating false documents that were used in fraudulent activities.
He pleaded guilty to the charges and received a total of five years of prison time, as UK National Crime Agency (NCA) reports.
The name of the crook is Andrei Sergejev and the police found that he used the online alias “tetreff” for selling compromised financial information to other cybercriminals.
Upon the arrest, which took place in March 2012 at his house in Walthamstow, London, the police found computer devices that stored stolen financial information from various victims. This included utility bills as well as bank statements. They also found a small amount of cannabis.
“Investigators believe he was compiling false ID packages as a service for criminals to use in financial fraud, and to facilitate international travel using false documents,” says the NCA post.
The crook, aged 42, pleaded guilty last month to a dozen charges of manufacturing items used in fraud and to two counts relating to the found drugs. On Tuesday, July 15, he received a sentence of four years and nine months for the aforementioned offenses.
“Once again, a criminal has found that operating online under an assumed name was not enough to escape the attentions of law enforcement. Sergejev was facilitating fraud on a significant scale, and this type of criminality comes at a significant cost to businesses and individuals in the UK. The National Crime Agency continues its efforts to drive down the threat from online crime,” said Steve Pye, of the Cyber Crime Unit of the NCA.