Confessions of an ID Theft Kingpin, Part I
Summary: Hieu Minh Ngo, a Vietnamese hacker who ran identity theft services selling "fullz" records from hacked data brokers, earned over $3 million before the U.S. Secret Service lured him to Guam and arrested him in February 2013. His businesses enabled an estimated $1 billion in new account fraud, and Secret Service agent Matt O'Neill said Ngo was selling personal information on more than 200 million Americans for pennies apiece.
Key Takeaway: Ngo's service charged customers about $1 per query while paying Court Ventures 14 cents per lookup, and it kept running for nine months after Experian acquired Court Ventures - so the question for any security leader is how a customer paying by wire from shifting Asian bank accounts passed due diligence at a major credit bureau.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Phishing & Social Engineering
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