Hacker Pleads Guilty In Major Identify Theft

[steven johnson]

I've been suspicious of the security surrounding wireless transactions for years. This case is not reassuring.

A hacker accused of stealing tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers in one of the largest computer break-ins in U.S. history pleaded guilty Friday to fraud, identity theft and other charges.

As part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, also agreed to forfeit more than $2.7 million, a Miami condo, a 2006 BMW 330i, a Tiffany diamond ring and Rolex watches. He faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 8
Gonzalez pleaded guilty in a Boston federal court to 20 counts of conspiracy, computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. Nineteen of the charges were contained in an indictment handed down in Massachusetts in August 2008, and one charge, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, stemmed from a New York indictment handed down in May 2008.


Gonzalez and two unidentified co-conspirators located in or near Russia broke into credit-card payment systems through a series of sophisticated techniques, including "wardriving" and the installation of sniffer programs to capture credit and debit card numbers, according to the indictments. Wardriving involves driving around in a car with a laptop to find accessible wireless computer networks in retail stores.

Gonzalez and his co-conspirators sold the numbers and also engaged in ATM fraud by encoding the data on the magnetic strips of blank cards and withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars at a time, according to the indictments. Gonzalez and the others concealed and laundered the money they received through the Web and by channeling funds through bank accounts in Eastern Europe.



Hacker Pleads Guilty In Major Identify Theft