(Russian) Hackers Indicted in Widespread ATM Heist ( $9Mil/12hrs.)

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Justice Department indicted eight Russian and Eastern European computer hackers, alleging they were part of a crime ring that allegedly broke into ATMs in hundreds of cities world-wide and stole $9 million in a matter of hours.

Case DocumentsCriminal indictment of the eight hackers Prosecutors in Atlanta announced indictments Tuesday in a scheme that is among the most brazen and damaging electronic-bank heists disclosed to date. One of the men accused was arrested and is awaiting extradition from Estonia. The others are thought to be at large.

The alleged hackers cracked a computer system at RBS WorldPay Inc., the U.S. payment processing division of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and cloned prepaid ATM cards, which thieves then used to withdraw cash from 2,100 ATMs from 280 cities around the world, including in the U.S. The synchronized operation, which began Nov. 8, 2008, took no more than 12 hours.

The RBS case is part of a boom in online theft from financial institutions. "More money is stolen electronically or [in] data breaches than through bank robberies," Shawn Henry, assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, said in an interview.

The alleged hackers targeted payroll debit cards that companies issue employees for withdrawing their salaries. Once the hackers entered the systems, they boosted the maximum allowed withdrawal and then tried to destroy data on the systems to cover up the break-in, prosecutors alleged.

REFERENCE----EXECUTIVE SUMMARY THE TRI-STATE JOINT SOVIET-EMIGRE ORGANIZED CRIME PROJECT. RUSSIAN-EMIGRE CRIME IN THE TRI-STATE AREA

Gangsters from the former Soviet Union have established a strong and abiding presence in the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania region, engaging in a wide array of crimes that range from sophisticated financial frauds to narcotics trafficking to murder.

Evidence also shows that members of disparate Russian-emigre crime groups here have the potential to develop into one of the most formidable organized crime challenges to law enforcement since the advent of La Cosa Nostra.

These are among the key findings of the Tri-State JointSoviet-Emigre Organized Crime Project, a cooperative research andinvestigative effort launched four years ago by four agencies in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania - the New York Organized Crime Task Force, the New York State Commission of Investigation,the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation and the Pennsylvania Crime Commission.

Investigative agents and staff from these agencies conducted the project in conjunction with criminal justice experts from Rutgers University. The Project's report presents the first comprehensive publicassessment of the threat posed to this region by criminal elements emanating from within the former Soviet Union.

The report catalogues the history and growth of Russian-emigre crime networks, from their core base in the Brighton Beachsection of Brooklyn to their current reach well beyond the New York metropolitan area into the counties of central New Jersey and the suburbs of Philadelphia.

One of the most troubling aspects is evidence of links between individuals here and criminal elements in the former Soviet Union, a phenomenon that lends a disturbing and complex international dimension to this emerging domestic law enforcement problem.The range of criminal and illicit activities linked to these groups is impressive.

The Project report details Russian-emigre involvement in a variety of highly sophisticated frauds and confidence schemes, financial crimes, including money laundering, counterfeiting and securities fraud, narcotics trafficking and an assortment of vice crimes.Russian-emigre criminals are no strangers to violence either.

THE NATURE OF RUSSIAN-EMIGRE CRIME

Crimes of Deception

Motor Fuel Tax Fraud

Insurance and Entitlement Fraud

Confidence Schemes

Counterfeiting

Violent Crimes

Homicide/Attempted Homicide

Extortion and Kidnapping

Drug Trafficking

Money Laundering

Vice Crimes (Regpay, a Florida credit card processing company operated by Byelorussians, was nailed for processing online child porn payments; Minx, Belarus, once a constituent republic of the Soviet Union (independent since 1991) is the country of origin of many of these predators now thieving on US soil.

--SNIP--PDF LONG READ http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Ahm0dOHcKHEJ:www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/russian.pdf

Not only are they NOT deported----they plead "persecution." That ploy gets them on the US govt gravy train. They are treated with kid gloves ---- they get special job set-asides (leaving born-Americans unemployed) AND they can collect SS without having paid a dime into the system. A buncha these Ruski parasites even sued the US govt when we tried to cut off the tax-paid goodies.

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IT'S ON THE HOUSE; MORTGAGE CONS GOT ATL. CITY FREE RIDE (27-member massive mortgage swindle)
NY POST, BRUCE GOLDING

Garri Zhigun and his cohorts were treated like kings in Atlantic City casinos, including the Borgata. The ringleaders of a massive mortgage scam got comped as high rollers in Atlantic City by gambling with more than $400,000 in cash that they swindled from slipshod subprime lenders tied to the current financial crisis, The Post has learned.

Garri Zhigun, 31, and Aleksander "Shorty" Lipkin, 30, used their ill-gotten gains to score free rooms, drinks, meals and show tickets at the Tropicana and Borgata casinos, a law-enforcement source said.

The Brooklyn men took 29 trips to the plush gambling dens in 2005 and 2006, playing with cash conned from lenders like Countrywide and Washington Mutual - whose now-worthless subprime mortgages were a key cause of the stock-market meltdown.

An investigation of casino records revealed that Zhigun bought a total of $434,850 in chips and cashed out only $135,000, the source said. Zhigun apparently shared the chips with Lipkin, according to the source. Zhigun's dice habit "can evidently be construed as a severe addiction," according to government records reviewed by The Post.

Both men also have a taste for drinking and driving, with Zhigun getting arrested for DWI twice and Lipkin once - while doing 90 mph in a Bentley on the Staten Island Expressway in July.

At the time of their betting binge, Zhigun was on supervised release after serving two years' prison for faking injury records in a long-running insurance scam involving staged car accidents that the feds broke up in 2001.

After getting sprung, Zhigun told probation officials that he was making only $400 a week as a "real-estate development researcher." But in reality, he was helping Lipkin run a crooked loan operation out of a Brooklyn-based brokerage owned by Zhigun's mom, Galina Zhigun.

According to the feds, a 27-member Russian crime ring used the brokerage, AGA Capital NY Inc., as a mortgage "boiler room" where loan brokers, processors, appraisers and others conspired to file fraudulent applications for more than 1,000 mortgages and home-equity loans worth $200 million. The ring netted at least $4 million in loan commissions alone, plus illegal profits estimated in the tens of millions.

Lipkin and Zhigun both pleaded guilty in the mortgage scam and are awaiting sentencing, but Zhigun last week began serving a seven-month stretch for violating the terms of his release in the earlier insurance fraud.

SOURCE http://www.nypost.com/seven/10202008/news/regionalnews/its_on_the_house_134417.htm

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RUSSIAN JAILED IN ID-THEFT SCAM VS. RICH AMERICANS (Bush campaign donor did scam online)
By LAURA ITALIANO, NY POST

A young Russian con man was sentenced to at least 3½ years in prison yesterday for a daring identity-theft scam that rooked wealthy Americans out of $1.5 million, and nearly cost a major backer of President Bush $7 million. Operating online from Moscow, Igor Klopov, 24, found many of his targets through the Forbes 400 list. He would target those from states like Texas and California, where property-deed information is available through the Internet.

He would then use that and other online or forged information to impersonate his marks, and plunder their accounts. His scams included assembling a complete identity dossier, with driver's licenses, birth certificates, utility bills, blank checks and brokerage statements. Klopov was foiled by Manhattan prosecutors as he tried to score his biggest payday - $7 million - from of the home-equity credit account of Texas billionaire Charles Wyly Jr., who donated $2 million to Bush in 2000.

Posing as Wyly, Klopov called the billionaire's bank and asked that a new home-equity line checkbook be sent to the home of an accomplice, who then tried to write a $7 million check to a Westchester gold dealer. Klopov was busted in May after coming to New York to claim the gold. "I can assure you I will change my personality," Klopov told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro, who answered, "I hope you're sincere about that." laura.italiano@nypost.com http://www.nypost.com/seven/11202008/news/worldnews/russian_jailed_in_id_theft_scam_vs__rich_139658.htm

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86 indicted in Russian mob accident scam

Brooklyn, N.Y. ---- 1/7/05 --- Law-enforcement officials have smashed a multimillion-dollar car-insurance fraud ring on Long Island involving bogus medical claims and crooked lawyers. An eight-month probe, conducted by the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office and the state Insurance Department, has produced 86 indictments and 400 felony counts against medical clinics, doctors and lawyers believed to have ties to Russian crime families in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, authorities said.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:B2BNkKbdMPUJ:www.insurancefraud.org/newsarchives/news_august2003.htm

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