14 DAY TRIAL // The Romanian Direction for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) along with local authorities have descended on multiple locations in several cities and arrested 20 persons suspected of being members of a cybercriminal gang. The seven-year-long operation, which involved phishing and fake eBay auctions, is said to have brought the cybercrooks illegal gains of over 500,000 euros.
According to the investigators, the network was very well structured, with its members operating out of Romania, Italy, Spain and the UK. The Romanian branch was co-ordinating the operation and its members were moving from city to city in order to avoid being caught.
However, an important nucleus was formed in Iasi, because it is one of the largest cities in the country and, most importantly, a big university center. This allowed the leaders of the gang to recruit students from the specialized universities here, who were willing to earn some extra cash.
A judge has decided that twelve of the individuals will be detained under temporary arrest for 29 days, while another seven have been released, but are not allowed to leave the country. All of them were studying in Iasi, at the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering from the "Gh. Asachi" Technical University, or at the Faculty of Computer Science from the "A. I. Cuza" University. The oldest of the arrested students is 25 years old.
"The DIICOT prosecutors have coordinated an operation to dismantle an organized criminal group, which between 2002 and 2009 has organized fictitious auctions on the Internet, especially on the www.ebay.com, www.ebay.it and www.ebay.ca websites, the cloning of the websites of several banks from UK and Italy, such as www.poste.it, www.ubibanca.it, www.cartasi.it, www.hsbc.co.uk and have used, without authorization, the credit card details obtained through phishing, in order to transfer sums of money into other accounts under the control of the group's members," Daniel Horodniceanu, one of the prosecutors, announced.
He also noted that, given the current evidence, the prosecution could legally prove only a fraud of 280,000 euros, but that the real amount was likely to be much bigger.
The members of the network living in other countries were withdrawing money from the targeted banks and were wiring the cash to the leaders in Romania, through Western Union. One interesting aspect is that the students, who were actually doing all the work, did not earn too much, compared with the heads of the operation.
For example, one of the arrested individuals was living in a student dorm, because he couldn't afford to pay rent for an apartment in the city. The parents of most of the students were still sending them food and money every month. Meanwhile, the ringleaders were living in luxury flats and had expensive cars.
"A total of 22 raids were performed in different locations across the counties of Iasi, Valcea, Mehedinti and the municipality of Bucharest, at the homes of the group's members. Three luxury cars, gold jewels weighing 100 grams, 2065 euros, 2150 British pounds, 2200 Romanian lei, 20 notebooks and desktop computers, 30 memory cards, hundreds of CDs and DVDs and two plasma TVs were seized," Chief Commissioner Gheorghe Zbarnea, the head of the Brigade for Fighting Organized Crime, Iasi branch, informed.
All individuals brought before the judge stand accusations of constituting and associating themselves in an organized criminal group, adhering to or supporting in any way an organized criminal group, committing computer infractions, gaining access to a computer system without authorization, unauthorized possession and utilization of a password, access code in order to commit computer crimes, and two have already admitted to their actions.
This is the second phishing gang disbanded by the Romanian authorities this year. Back in March, we reported that DIICOT had coordinated an operation against the members of a similar group based in western Romania. The same month, the police arrested a Pentagon hacker in the city of Iasi, who had been wanted by the U.S. authorities since 2006.