Italian police arrest leader of money mule gang

Oct 16, 2016 21:10 GMT  ·  By

Italian state police have arrested in Bologna a Russian man they believe to be connected to Evgeniy Mikhaylovich Bogachev, the leader of the infamous Gameover ZeuS gang, who developed and distributed a custom version of the Zeus banking trojan.

Police arrested the yet unnamed man during a raid on five locations across Italy, in Rome, Bologna, and Parma.

Authorities consider the Russian national as the local leader of a criminal network tasked with laundering money stolen using malware.

Group used fake job listings to recruit helpers

According to Italian police, the group operated out of Rome and used two different methods to transfer stolen money out of the country to acolytes in the Ukraine.

The Italian group used ads for phantom jobs at a local warehouse to recruit new members. The group would then propose to the "new hires" to participate in their money laundering scheme.

Victims would be asked to accept money into their accounts, which they would cash or retransmit to third parties abroad.

Additionally, new recruits could also help by receiving high-valued goods at their home, which they would repackage and send to locations in the Ukraine via "reliable" transporters.

All the money sent to their bank accounts and the products reaching their homes would be paid using stolen funds.

Group members were only "money mules"

The group operating in Italy, which police says also included a Moldavian and a Ukrainian man, had access to the stolen funds via malware that infected computers worldwide.

When they didn't use recruits, the group bought high-value products themselves, such as laptops, smartphones, and jewelry, and shipped them to their counterparts hidden in the luggage of passengers traveling to the Ukraine.

On the ladder of cybercrime, the group was at the lowest level, operating as money mules for the malware's creators. Italian police didn't elaborate on how they tied the gang to Bogachev. The FBI is offering a reward of $3 million for clues that lead to Bogachev's arrest.

Italian police said they were called in to investigate these incidents after crooks used malware to steal over €500,000 from the bank accounts of a Bologna-based transport firm and €120,000 from a Bologna-based religious group.