Wow! I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head when I read the story about three men being responsible for recently stealing 130 million credit and debit cards. To quote one of my favorite characters, Jack Tripper from the hilarious sitcom Three's Company, "Lordy, lordy, lordy". While I'm always reading about cyber crime, it took me a minute to wrap my head around the enormity of this case. Imagine for a minute no Internet and the bad guys trying to physically steal the 130 million cards. Would that be possible? Maybe. But feasible? Naw! That's more likely the route they would have taken when I was growing up. Today, computers have made all that unnecessary. So here we are with what's been deemed the biggest case in ID theft thus far.
Ok, so how was it done? Well, according to officials, the bad guys (one American and two Russian nationals) intercepted the card numbers when customers made purchases (some at 7-Eleven) and hacked into various department stores and some Fortune 500 companies. The stolen credit card numbers were then uploaded to servers in New Jersey, California and even the Ukraine and then sold to other bad guys who made fraudulent purchases. The obvious greed in this case becomes even more ominous when, interestingly enough, Mr. Albert Gonzalez, the only named defendant, is familiar to law enforcement as he's also facing charges in connection with stolen credit cards from TJ Maxx. Go figure!
That e-crime is big business is an understatement. Today's cyber criminals are bold, increasingly sophisticated and well-funded by criminal organizations. But sometimes they get a little too big for their britches and get caught. So here we have a great example of why crime doesn't always pay. Kudos to the good guys!
