FBI, Bulgarian Officials Jointly Foil Sophisticated Cyber-crime Group

The FBI of USA jointly with the Bulgarian GDBOP's (Division for Combating Organized Crime's) 'Computer Crimes Department' recently terminated a global cyber-crime operation, published softpedia.com dated December 10, 2011.

Bulgaria's Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that the cyber-crime perpetrators dispatched phishing e-mails supposedly from prominent American banking institutions that led recipients onto phony Internet-banking sites solely for theft of their account user-ids and passwords. Pcworld.com reported this on December 12, 2011. And while the names of the criminals weren't articulated, they were reportedly aged 28-36 years.

Moreover, the collected material after the theft was utilized for moving funds from the victims' accounts with banks. As per investigators, the alleged culprits, three in number, utilized Internet-payment services like paypal.com, libertyreserve.com, moneybookers.com, webmoney.ru, amongst others.

Police officials, who searched the suspects' residences, confiscated PCs, loaded with hacking software; storage media gadgets; laptops; cell-phones; Internet-banking credentials from theft; and numerous receipts related to money transactions. Understandably, 'financial crimes' has been named as the reason for charging the three men.

Meanwhile, operation by law enforcement eventually leading to the suspects' arrests occurred on December 7, 2011 just the day prior to Robert Muller Director of FBI's visit to the Bulgarian capital Sofia for a meeting with Boyko Borisov Prime Minister of the country, Tsvetan Tsvetanov Interior Minster as well as the security structures' directors of Bulgaria.

Notably, officials representing FBI and Bulgaria at the bilateral meeting said that for both sides the priority task was combating cyber-crime.

The meeting also held discussions about the effective combined operations resulting out of cooperation among police and special services of Bulgaria with FBI during 2009-11 in connection with serious well-arranged offences, cyber-crime, offences against economic and financial systems, as well as countering of global extremism.

Tsvetanov emphasized that Muller's visit to Bulgaria clearly indicated that the two sides were collaborating in a bilateral way for fighting transnational crime. In his opinion, Robert Muller's presence in Bulgaria implied much to the mechanism of law enforcement. He therefore thanked officials of every agency of law enforcement, which played a role in good partnership. Press.mvr.bg reported this on December 8, 2011.

Related article: FBI’s ICCC Annual Report Discusses Fraudulent and Non-Fraudulent Complaints

» SPAMfighter News - 12/21/2011