Seller of T.J.Maxx Data Arrested in Turkey

A person of Ukrainian nationality has been arrested from a Turkish nightclub. He was allegedly selling information of credit cards thieved during the big security violation at TJX, T.J.Maxx's parent company.

Maksym Yastremskiy, believed to be in mid-20s, was held by the police in Turkey. Dialogue is on for his extradition to the United States, told an inspector with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Doug Bem, as reported by the InformationWeek Website on August 22, 2007. According to Bem, the accused was being tracked by many federal agencies for quite some time adding that he seems to be selling the card data dating back to the TJX security breach. Bem, calling it a significant breakthrough, added that the accused does not seem to have broken into the TJX network himself and is supposed to be a reseller by the authorities.

The police in Florida nabbed ten people recently trying to obtain Wal-Mart gift cards using TJX customer data. The TJX breach is supposed to have leaked out the customer details of 45.7 Million people and is thought to have happened by hacking open wireless routers at company's subsidiaries.

TJX, in recent months, has tried to estimate the financial stakes it faced due to this leak - the biggest data theft ever. Earlier, it had estimated the financial losses of about $12 Million per quarter but latest revision has taken the toll to huge $150 Million.

Third party security companies have come up with even more demoralizing figures. Protegrity put this amount at a staggering $1.6 Billion while Secerno has made an estimated stake of over $2 Billon. These calculations include indirect costs such as restitution of reputation expenses coupled with the direct costs that resulted from the data theft.

TJX had to face many class-action lawsuits that demanded tens of millions of dollars as compensation as a result of this security breach and data theft. The Massachusetts Bankers Association, which is representing 207 financial institutions related to this issue, had announced earlier of having filed lawsuits in the federal court in Boston.

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» SPAMfighter News - 9/6/2007