Two brothers suspected of being the masterminds of a series of major cyberheists have been\u00a0arrested in Fresno, California. The two young men have been charged by the FBI for targeting\u00a0commercial banks and brokerages where they spirited away millions of dollars.<\/p>\n
Gheorghe Baltaga and Adrian Baltaga who hail from Moldova and aged 26 and 25 respectively\u00a0were arrested on the 29th of October. According to documents revealed by the U.S District Court for\u00a0the Northern District of California, the two brothers conspired to steal from bank clients. Their plan\u00a0was to illegally get access to customers\u2019 login information to Fidelity Investments brokerage firm.<\/p>\n
They then planned to set up rogue automated clearing house (ACH) links which connected their\u00a0targeted customers\u2019 accounts and their prepaid debit card accounts which they had already taken\u00a0control of.<\/p>\n
After having taken control of the customers\u2019 accounts, the two brothers then used the compromised\u00a0debit cards to buy money orders from the U.S Postal Services and MoneyGram. They then\u00a0deposited these money orders into different accounts which they then cashed through ATMs.<\/p>\n
The Baltaga brothers\u2019 indictments don\u2019t pour a lot of light as to the extent of the supposed\u00a0cyber crimes committed by these men. However, investigators believe that the two men were\u00a0involved deeply in a number of major cyberheists. They believe that the Baltaga brothers were involved in the 2012 Maryland title company cyberheist where $1.7M was stolen. The lawyer of the\u00a0brothers was, however, non-committal to comment on any of the charges.<\/p>\n
Cybercriminals are using sophisticated technique to steal and then swivel the funds out of the\u00a0country. In 2012, criminals were targeting people to train them on how to become mules. According\u00a0to one mule, she was supposed to \u2018work-from-home\u2019 and help the cyber crooks set up the\u00a0sophisticated network. At one point, the mule admitted to having received a message from the\u00a0criminals notifying her to expect $10,000 in her account. She was supposed to immediately wire the\u00a0funds to different accounts in Ukraine and Russia. For this service, she was to nip 8% commission.<\/p>\n
According to the recruited mule, she had landed a job with an Australian software company. Her\u00a0job was to aid the company in debt collection from the company\u2019s international clients. After\u00a0searching the name of the client from whom the employer was supposed to receive payment from, it\u00a0turned out that it was a title firm based in Washington, D.C address. Due to fear of backlash from\u00a0competition, the firm requested not to be named.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two brothers suspected of being the masterminds of a series of major cyberheists have been\u00a0arrested in Fresno, California. The two young men have been charged by the FBI for targeting\u00a0commercial banks and brokerages where they spirited away millions of dollars. Gheorghe Baltaga and Adrian Baltaga who hail from Moldova and aged 26 and 25 respectively\u00a0were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[55,81,41,62,49,50,74,85,86],"class_list":["post-7273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-news","tag-cyber-heist","tag-cyberheist","tag-hackers","tag-krebs","tag-money-mules","tag-phishing","tag-phishing-email","tag-trojan","tag-zeus-trojan"],"yoast_head":"\n