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And yet another cyber-thief faces prison time.
Rogelio Hacket, Jr, is the latest cyber-criminal to admitting to stealing credit card numbers and selling them to others. The Georgia resident pled guilty to fraud and identity theft in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.April 21, according to the Department of Justice. Federal prosecutors alleged that he had been trafficking in stolen credit card information since 2002.
The US Secret Service discovered more than 675,000 stolen credit card numbers on Hackett’s computers when they searched his home in June 2009. He’d hacked businesses to access credit card databases and sold off the stolen numbers to others, according to court documents. He also purchased numbers from other thieves through various online forums. He also manufactured and sold counterfeit plastic cards with the stolen numbers.
Hackett stole more than 359,000 credit card numbers from a single online ticketing company in a series of attacks which began in August 2007. The company was not named in the documents.
Thieves amassed more than $36.6 million in fraudulent transactions using those numbers, the prosecutors said. Hackett pocketed more than $100,000 from his identity theft activities.
Sentencing is on July 22. Hackett faces up to ten years in prison for the access device charge and two years on the identity theft charge, for a maximum of 12 years. He also faces fines of up to twice the losses suffered by victims.
Hackett’s guilty plea comes a week after Lin Mun Poo, a serial hacker who hacked into the Federal Reserve, admitted to stealing and selling credit card numbers for $1,000 each.