Nine Indicted for Cyber Fraud in Spain

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Summary: A Spanish judge has indicted nine people for participating in the theft of $45 million in a hacking and cyber fraud scheme.

FindLaw.com reports that nine people have been indicted by a Spanish judge due to allegations that they were part of a $45 million theft after hacking a bank’s card payments system.

  

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On Sunday, Judge Eloy Velasco of Spain’s National Court indicted seven Romanians and two Spaniards. They were accused of fraudulently extracting money from ATMs in February 2013. Judge Velasco added that it appeared that the nine individuals charged may have been part of a larger international criminal organization that laundered money and participated in fraudulent credit card transactions.

The cash extractions from the ATMs occurred worldwide. Eight United States-based hackers are also linked to the transactions, due to their breaching a security system of a company that handled card payments of an Omani bank. The hackers distributed access code numbers to thieves across the globe. This led to the facilitation of over 34,000 cash transactions in 23 countries in a mere 13 hours.

United States authorities reported that $45 million had been stolen, which made the occurrence one of the largest cyber hackings in history.

Those that were indicted in Madrid used the illegally obtained codes to remove $390,078 from ATMs on February 20, 2013. The group had also raided a cash dispenser in a similarly fraudulent manner the previous December.

The U.S. secret service worked with Spanish police to arrest the suspects in December. Seven of the hackers who stole the card codes were arrested in New York in May 2013. The supposed leader of that group was murdered in the Dominican Republic. The hackers were of Dominican ancestry, but were U.S. citizens.

Photo credit: deccanchronicle.com