This is National Police Week, an opportunity to acknowledge the sacrifice law enforcement officers and their families make on our behalf.  The financial services companies that belong to ITAC, the Identity Theft Assistance Center, are especially grateful. We know it’s a difficult and dangerous job. Our members work with law enforcement everyday to keep you and your money safe.

The bad guys are turning from guns to sophisticated cybercrimes to rob banks, merchants and consumers of large sums of money. One recent case demonstrates the nefarious methods used by fraudsters to gain access to your money and how banks work to protect you and your money. In this case, the good guys won.

Two Belarusian nationals, Dmitry Naskovets and Sergey Semashko, were arrested last month on suspicion of creating and operating CallService.biz, a Russian-language site for identity criminals who traffic in stolen bank account data and other information.  The website was, among other things, designed to counteract security measures put in place by financial institutions.  Legitimate security measures require persons seeking to make transfers or withdrawals from accounts, or to conduct other financial transactions, to verify by telephone certain information associated with the account. Businesses that accept online or telephone purchases by credit card have similar security measures. Representatives at these financial institutions and businesses are trained to make sure that persons purporting over the telephone to be account holders appear to fit the account holder’s profile. So if an account holder is an American female, the screener is supposed to make sure the caller speaks English, and does in fact sound like a female.

In the case of CallService.biz, if a criminal wanted to access a person’s line of credit they would provide the account holder’s biographical information, including the account holder’s name, address, Social Security number, e-mail address and even answers to security questions the financial institution might ask to verify the account holder’s identity.  CallService.biz would then have someone who matched the legitimate account holder’s gender and was proficient in the needed language, pose as the account holder and call the financial institution to authorize the fraudulent transaction.

The site boasted that its purveyors had served more than 2,000 criminal customers.  Naskovets and Semashko advertised their services on other sites, such as CardingWorld.cc.  The ads boasted that their team had conducted more than 5,400 “confirmation calls” to banks.

The FBI seized the domain name pursuant to a seizure warrant.

Law enforcement held the winning hand in this case based on solid police work and international cooperation.  The loser, Naskovets, faces a maximum sentence of 39½ years in prison.  Financial services companies advocate tough sentences for criminals like Naskovets and Semashko in order to send a clear message: If you try to defeat our systems and defraud our customers, you will go to prison for a long time.

In honor of National Police Week, we salute the police force and their dedication to keeping our communities safe.

Related posts:

1. Identity Theft: An International Conspiracy
2. Identity Fraud Fact: Little Guy is Big Target
3. Why Black Friday Could Be a Red Carpet for Scammers
4. The Tax Man Cometh (and identity thieves are not far behind)
5. The Taxman (and Identity Theives) Cometh: The “Tax Tip Thursday” Edition