14 DAY TRIAL // The creator and owner of a service used by identity thieves to defraud US banks, has been extradited from the Czech Republic to the United States in order to face the charges pending against him.
Dmitry M. Naskovets, 26, of Belarus, who was brought in the country on Friday and appeared before a judge in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York yesterday, is named as defendant in an indictment unsealed in April.
He is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
According to the authorities, Naskovets and another Belarusian national named Sergey Semasko, created and ran a business that helped identity thieves defeat bank security screening procedures.
The services offered involved calling financial institutions and posing as the owners of compromised accounts, in order to authorize fraudulent transactions.
The business employed people of both sexes that were fluent in English or German and trained them on how to deceive the employees of banks in US and Germany.
The operation ran via a website called CallService.biz and the services were advertised on underground forums frequented by fraudsters, including Semasko's own CardingWorld.cc.
The CallService.biz website claimed to have performed over 5400 successful confirmation calls on behalf of 2090 customers (identity thieves).
Naskovets was arrested on April 15 in the Czech Republic, while Semasko was apprehended at the same time by Belarusian law enforcement authorities and was subsequently charged in his home country.
Other people associated with the operation were also arrested in Belarus and the computers used to host CallService.biz were seized in Lithuania.
"The extradition of Dmitry Naskovets is the result of exemplary cooperation between U.S. and international law enforcement agencies.
"We will continue to work with the FBI and our partners abroad to identify and stop cybercriminals wherever they execute their illegal trade," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.