Five New Suspects Indicted in Two-Year-Old Identity Theft Case

The New York County District Attorney's Office announced that five Eastern Europeans were indicted for dealing in stolen credit cards and other crimes that resulted in $4 million being lost to fraud. International authorities arrested three of them in 2008 and were recently extradited to US.

Viatcheslav Vasilyev, Vladimir Kamarenko, Egor Shevelev, Dzimitry Burak and Oleg Kovelin are the names of the new defendants in a partially sealed 173-count indictment charging a total of seventeen individuals and a New York County-based company. All of them were members of an online gang called by prosecutors the "Western Express Cybercrime Group."

This organized crime group operated through a network of underground websites and forums between 2001 and 2007 and its activity consisted of larceny, identity theft, money laundering and wire fraud. Stolen credit card details and other personal identifiable information was being sold, bought and used to acquire goods and services illegally, which were then resold for profit.

Viatcheslav Vasilyev, a.k.a. "TheViver," of Russia, and Vladimir Kamarenko, a.k.a. "Inexwor," or "Envisor," of Moldova were arrested on July 30, 2008 in Prague, Czech Republic. Last week, they were extradited to the United States. Egor Shevelev, a.k.a. "Eskalibur" or "Esk," of Ukraine, was apprehended on May 10, 2008 in Greece and still awaits extradition.

Dzimitry Burak, a.k.a. "Graph" or "Leon Kurochkin," 26, of Belarus, and Oleg Kovelin, 28, of Moldova, still remain at large. Both of them are known to have access to forged identification papers. Despite being Belorussian, Burak's last known residence is in Ukraine.

The four-year long investigation was the joint effort of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Identity Theft Unit and the United States Secret Service. Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau also thanked other law enforcement agencies in U.S., Czech Republic, Greece, and Ukraine, for assisting with the investigation, apprehension and extradition.