Global $251m credit card hacking ring busted

NEW YORK (REUTERS) - Eleven people in the United States (US), the United Kingdom and Vietnam have been arrested and accused of running a US$200 million (S$251 million) worldwide credit card fraud ring, US and UK law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.

"One of the world's major facilitation networks for online card fraud has been dismantled by this operation, and those engaged in this type of crime should know that they are neither anonymous, nor beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies," Mr Andy Archibald, interim Deputy Director of the National Cyber Crime Unit, said in a statement on the British government's Serious Organized Crime Agency website. The arrests were coordinated by the three countries, the statement said.

On Wednesday, prosecutors in New Jersey said they had filed charges against a 23-year-old man from Vietnam.

In a statement, they said that authorities in Vietnam had arrested Duy Hai Truong in that country on May 29 in an effort to break up a ring that he is being accused of running with co-conspirators, who were not named in the statement.

Prosecutors claim Truong and accomplices stole information related to more than a million credit cards and resold it to criminal customers through the websites www.matteuter.biz and www.mattfeuter.com, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in New Jersey.

Although Truong has been charged in the US, he does not have a US-based lawyer because he is being held in Vietnam, said Ms Rebekah Carmichael, a spokesman for the US Attorney in New Jersey.

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