Romanian authorities have detained 25 people who are suspected of being members of an international gang of cyberthieves who hacked into banks, cloned payment cards and used them to steal over $15 million.

The group is believed to have over 52 members of Romanian and other nationalities, and broke into computer systems belonging to banks from Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, and Muscat, Oman, according to the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT).

The hackers used the unauthorized access to steal payment card data associated with the accounts of large corporations and then used the data to create fraudulent copies of those cards. The cloned cards were distributed to members of the group who used them to withdraw money from ATMs in different countries, DIICOT said Sunday.

The withdrawals were performed in batches over very short periods of time and typically on non-business days according to Romanian prosecutors. On Feb. 20, 2013, for example, members of the gang withdrew $9 million from ATMs in Japan. On Dec. 2 that same year, the gang made around 4,200 withdrawals from ATMs across 15 Romanian cities, totalling $5 million.

Read the Full Article: Source – PC World
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2915112/police-breaks-up-cybergang-that-stole-over-15-million-from-banks.html

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