A US court accused no less than 17 persons of identity theft, credit card fraud and other illegal activities conducted and promoted with the help of the Internet, Reuters reported today. According to the same source, a corporation is also involved in the case. It appears that the fraudsters obtained no less than $4 million using approximately 95,000 stolen credit card numbers but the prosecutors managed to end the case after a 2-year investigation. But what's more interesting is the way the defendants managed to obtain the money: it seems like they published adverts on the Internet, selling credit cards and other useful information to the ones interested in the illegal activities.

Now, the juicy part of the news: Vadim Vassilenko, 40-year-old, and Yelena Barysheva, 42, two of the 17 fraudsters are already in jail for "falsifying business records and violating New York banking law by running an unlicensed check cashing and money transfer business," Reuters informed. The two defendants, who are actually a married couple, pleaded guilty one year ago and are currently serving the sentence.

Credit card fraud tends to become a very popular activity all over the world as the fraudsters find it very easy to earn money straight from their laptop. There were numerous cases when these malicious people were arrested after they managed to steal impressive amounts of money. Certainly, it is a problem and the authorities struggle to stop it but more and more reports refer to successful credit card fraud attempts which affect numerous consumers.

This time, we're talking about 95,000 stolen credit card numbers which is pretty impressive when we think that most of them were distributed on the web through ads displayed in every corner of the world. So, is there anything to do to stop this phenomenon? Just be sure that you don't offer your sensitive details to unknown persons...