24 people arrested in seven countries in credit card scam

At least 24 people have been arrested in seven countries, including the US and Germany, for running one of the largest cyber crimes in which they used the Internet to exploit stolen credit card and other personal information of hundreds of thousands of victims globally. India-born US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara said
while 11 individuals were arrested in the US, another 13 were arrested in the UK, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Norway and Germany in the largest coordinated international law enforcement action in history directed at the "carding" crimes--offenses. 'Carding' refers to various criminal activities associated with stealing personal identification information and financial information belonging to other individuals-- including the account information associated with credit cards, bank cards, debit cards and then using that information to obtain money, goods, or services without the victims' authorisation or consent. Those arrested in the US are Christian Cangeopol, Mark Caparelli, Sean Harper, Alex Hatala, Joshua Hicks, Michael Hogue, Mir Islam, Peter Ketchum and Steven Hansen. "As the cyber threat grows more international, the response must be increasingly global and forceful," Bharara said. "The coordinated law enforcement actions taken by an unprecedented number of countries around the world today demonstrate that hackers and fraudsters cannot count on being able to prowl the Internet in anonymity and with impunity, even across national boundaries. "Clever computer criminals operating behind the supposed veil of the Internet are still subject to the long arm of the law," Bharara said. According to the charging documents, individuals sold credit cards by the thousands and took the private information of several people. The defendants casually offered every stripe of malware and virus to fellow fraudsters, even including software-enabling cyber voyeurs to hijack an unsuspecting consumer's personal computer camera.