UK ZBot Fraudsters Officially Named and Charged

The Metropolitan Police Service has released the names of eleven Eastern Europeans charged for their roles in a major cyberfraud operation that involved using a computer trojan called ZeuS.

Twenty suspects, fifteen men and five women, were arrested short before dawn on Tuesday, following police raids at various locations in the Greater London area.

Eight of them were charged with conspiracy to defraud and money laundering, two only with conspiracy to defraud, and another with possession of false identity document.

The remaining nine suspects were bailed, but are the subject of future investigations and charges could be brought against them at a later date.

Five of the suspected fraudsters, Yuriy Korovalenko, Yevhen Kulibaba, Roman Zenyk, Milka Valerij and Iryna Prakochyk, are Ukrainian.

Another three, Ivars Poikans, Kaspars Cliematnieks and Karina Kostromina, are Latvian, while the remaining three, Aleksander Kusner, Eduard Babaryka and Zurab Revazishvili are from Estonia, Belarus and Georgia, respectively.

KrebsOnSecurity reports that Yevhen Kulibaba, 32, a property developer, who was living in Nevada Heights, Chingford, Essex, is the suspected leader of the gang.

Previous reports in the local media stated that he was arrested together with his wife. Police did not confirm this, but the only female arrested at the same location is 33-year-old Karina Kostromina.

Four of the suspects are unemployed, two worked in a supermarket, two in building construction, one as a driver and another one as a freelance web designer.

The group is accused to using a notorious banking trojan known as ZeuS or Zbot, to steal money from the bank accounts of thousands of HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Bank and Lloyds TSB customers.

So far, losses of £6 million corresponding to a period of only three-months, have been identified in the UK, but authorities expect this figure to grow significantly as the investigation continues.