Man Pleads Guilty to Hacking Brokerage Accounts for Money Laundering

Alexey Mineev, a New Hampshire (USA) resident, in the 1st week of June 2009 admitted in Manhattan (USA) federal court that he had been involved in a money laundering scheme.

The court documents state that Mineev agreed to give up $111,954 to compensate the amount he swindled. Along with that, Mineev has been sentenced to serve prison for up to 20 years and pay $500,000 in fines.

Reportedly, during November 2008, the New Hampshire man along with two accomplices was legally charged of running a scam in which a malicious Trojan program was furtively planted on the computers of brokerage and bank customers. The sinister Trojan stole passwords and account numbers every time victims accessed their accounts on the Internet.

Investigating officials state that Alexander Bobnev, another conniver, e-mailed the compromised accounts' screenshots to Mineev, showing the sum transmitted to the latter's drop account. The screenshots were further accompanied by instructions to withdraw the money immediately.

After this, Mineev transferred the money amounting up to US$10,000 to Russia through the Western Union money transfer.

When Mineev together with Bobnev were accused in November 2008, the Department of Justice in the United States charged Aleksey Volunskiy, a third individual from New York, of similarly creating drop accounts as well as laundering stolen cash.

The defendants knew little that the federal investigators were monitoring their accounts using a secret informant's services. Consequently, the feds had got a clear picture when the alleged culprits moved cash from accounts related to investment service vendor Charles Schwab and other places to credit the sums to their own financial accounts.

The court documents state that the scam operated during September 2006-Decemebr 2007, albeit Mineev participated in it for only during August-December 2007.

In the meantime, the security researchers commented that hacking accounts was an increasing problem for brokerage firms and banks. For such illegal activity, cyber criminals often recruit money mules who engage in siphoning money from compromised accounts to offshore accounts. Many-a-times these mules hardly know about the fraudulent schemes they work for other than believing that their recruiters are some international companies.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 6/10/2009