Dmitry ‘ddd1ms’ Smilianets will appear in US Federal Court next week.
“This type of crime is the cutting edge,” says US attorney Paul J Fishman. “Those who have the expertise and the inclination to break into our computer networks threaten our economic wellbeing, our privacy and our national security.” A $300 million credit card hacking ring which stole over 160 million card numbers – the biggest cybercrime case in US history – has been broken up, and five men from Russia and Ukraine are accused of involvement. Among the accused is Dmitry ‘ddd1ms’ Smilianets, former owner of League of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter Strike pro team Moscow 5, who will see the inside of a New Jersey Federal Courtroom next week. Smilianets is alleged to have been the one in charge of selling the stolen card data and distributing the profits. Moscow 5 was disbanded after Smilianets’ arrest.
It was a small but specialized unit of thieves, according to prosecutors. Russians Vladimir Drinkman, 32, and Alexandr Kalinin, 26, were the hackers who broke into the card networks. Roman Kotov, 32, mined those networks for data after the hack. Mikhail Rytikov, 26, of Ukraine, provided the web hosting the team needed, concealing the group’s activities, while Smilianets was the go-between who dealt with the card forgers, charging $10 for US cards, $15 for Canadian cards and $50 for the more secure European cards. Smilianets and Drinkman are the only two of the team to have been arrested, which happened June last year when they went travelling in the Netherlands. The other three are still at large.
Among the companies alleged to have been hacked by the team: a Visa licensee, JC Penney Co, JetBlue Airways and the French retailer Carrefour, as well as Nasdaq. The Nasdaq hack is supposed to have infected servers with software intended to enable the team to delete, change or steal data, but the full extent of the Nasdaq hack is not publicly known at this time.
Source: VG24/7
