Four Fraudsters Busted with T.J. Maxx Cards

Via InformationWeek -

A recent Government Accountability Office report noted the difficulty of linking data theft to identity theft, but the U.S. Secret Service is having no such problems. The agency earlier this week said it has arrested and indicted four members of an organized fraud ring in South Florida, charging each of them with aggravated identity theft, counterfeit credit-card trafficking, and conspiracy. And the Secret Service has been able to trace the origin of the data used to perpetrate this identity theft and fraud back to the theft of millions of customer records from T.J. Maxx parent company TJX and from Polo Ralph Lauren.

The South Florida bust resulted in the recovery of about 200,000 stolen credit card account numbers used in fraud losses roughly calculated to be more than $75 million. Agents also seized two pickup trucks, $10,000 cash, and one handgun in connection with the case.

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Law enforcement continues to chip away at the mystery. The Secret Service's Miami Electronic Crimes Task Force, working with the agency's Nashville field office, earlier this year arrested a 30-year-old Florida man -- who used the online handle "Blinky" -- and his girlfriend. Blinky is accused of trafficking counterfeit credit cards and identifications for years over the Internet. His arrest turned up evidence of an organized fraud ring involving Cuban nationals operating in South Florida and led to the four arrests and indictments announced this week. The fraudsters were sending large amounts of money via E-Gold accounts to known cybercriminals in Eastern Europe in return for tens of thousands of stolen credit card account numbers. The stolen credit card account numbers were then used to counterfeit credit cards in "plants" throughout southern Florida, the Secret Service said in a statement.

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This is equal to busting the drug users on the corner. This ring in FL is the end-user of the stolen accounts and while this "connects" them to the TJ Maxx hack, they are not the ones that conducted the original theft. But clearly this crew was bad and deserves to be behind bars.

Perhaps these people can be used to track down these guys in Eastern Europe...but I am not holding my breath. These guys are protected in ways that make normal drug dealers look like Mickey Mouse.