The Department of Justice announced the unsealing of a federal indictment charging 36 individuals for their alleged roles in the Infraud Organization, an Internet-based cybercriminal enterprise that is alleged to have engaged in a large-scale cyberfraud.   The indictment alleges that the enterprise caused more than $530 million in actual losses to consumer, businesses, and financial institutions.

According to the criminal indictment, members used an online discussion forum called “in-fraud” with the slogan of “in Fraud WE Trust” to discuss, meet, and conduct criminal activities, including the sale and purchase of stolen social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, passwords, and other personally identifying information, advertising services to facilitate such activity, and the dissemination of malware.The indictment includes over 100 overt acts that included offering credit card skimmers for sale as well as post-sale support and the selling of compromised credit card numbers and PayPal logins.  One of the defendants offered guidance to other members on the deployment of and use of random access memory point of sale malware as a means to harvest stolen data.

The investigation was conducted by the Las Vegas Office of Homeland Security Investigations, the Henderson, Nevada Police Department, the DOJ Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Gang Section, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada with cooperation of a number of law enforcement agencies around the world.