WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st August, 2020) A US resident from Moldova pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for authoring a malware program for the hacker group Infraud that allowed cyber thieves to steal nearly a half billion Dollars, the Justice Department said in a press release.
"Valerian Chiochiu, aka 'Onassis,' 'Flagler,' 'Socrate,' and 'Eclessiastes,' 30, pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge James C. Mahan in the District of Nevada," the release said on Friday. "His plea came just over a month after the co-founder and administrator of Infraud, Sergey Medvedev of Russia, separately pleaded guilty on June 26."
According to the indictment, the Infraud Organization was created in October 2010 by Medvedev and Svyatoslav Bondarenko, aka "Obnon," "Rector," and "Helkern," 34, of Ukraine, to promote the Infraud Organization as the premier destination for "carding" -purchasing retail items with counterfeit or stolen credit card information - on the internet, the release said.
Under the slogan, "In Fraud We Trust," the organization directed traffic and potential purchasers to automated vending sites of its members, which served as online conduits to traffic in stolen identification documents, stolen financial and banking information, malware, and other illicit goods, the release said.
As part of his plea agreement, Chiochiu admitted to authoring a strain of malware known to the computer security community as "FastPOS," the release added.
During the course of its seven-year history, the Infraud Organization inflicted approximately $2.2 billion in intended losses, and more than $568 million in actual losses, on a wide swath of financial institutions, merchants, and private individuals, and would have continued to do so for the foreseeable future if left unchecked, according to the release.
Chiochiu is a national of the Republic of Moldova, but resided in the United States during the period of the conspiracy. Sentencing in the case has been scheduled for December 11.
