Secrets of the investigation: a high-profile case of stuff carding

[Jollier]

On January 18, an international police operation to suppress the activities of a cross-border organized crime group was conducted in Belarus and Spain with the support of law enforcement agencies of the United States of America. Its participants were taken at one time. In Spain, one of the organizers of the scheme was taken, in Belarus, seven of his accomplices. Immigrants from the CIS countries who were engaged in stuff carding were detained. They purchased expensive goods in foreign online stores using funds from other people's bank cards, the details of which they bought on the Darknet. Even then, it was clear that the damage amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But only over time did the true mega-scale of this criminal group become clear.

Stuff carding, resale of goods at a reduced price. Such products are usually purchased remotely in other countries by criminals using discredited bank cards without the knowledge of the owners. The price reduction for this reason can be significant. Stuff carding can be considered a way to cash out money obtained by criminal means.

The concept of stuff carding has been known since the 90s. In the Republic of Belarus, the first cases of stuff carding appeared approximately before 2003. These were the first persons who had already been brought to justice, who were engaged in thefts from foreign Internet sites, in particular, America, as a rule. In general, the stuff carding scheme is, as it were, laid out on the Internet. This is not a secret.

At the beginning of the investigation of this criminal case, it was believed that the main defendants had been engaged in carding 3-4 years before law enforcement officers came to them. In fact, the history has much deeper roots. More than 10 years ago, several graduates of the capital's mathematical gymnasium learned about stuff carding. In Minsk, they pulled off several cases, after which they decided to leave the country. The choice fell on Thailand, where they had already seriously taken up their shadow business.

And already there, probably not fearing that they would be watched, since they were initially tourists there, they took up this criminal activity.

Alexey Volchok investigated the criminal case from the very beginning, provided for the planning of the investigation and the implementation of the most important investigative actions. He was engaged in the development of the resolution on bringing them as defendants. He prepared all the most important documents related to the criminal case.

They immediately divided the functions among themselves. One of them knew English very well. The resource where one could purchase the details, where one could purchase the goods, where one could find front men who provided, let's say, assistance in the redirection of these goods, paid for by criminal means, was completely closed. And already there they began to engage in criminal activity.

But a friendly team did not work out. As soon as everyone understood how the criminal scheme works, and big money loomed on the horizon, the defendants scattered. Moreover, one of them, the one who knew English, went to live in Spain. It was this person who in the future would become a link between the two organizers of the carder groups. Later, both of them would return to Minsk, but they would work separately.

At the initial stage, only two defendants were known who were on the territory of the Republic of Belarus and a citizen of the Republic of Belarus who was on the territory of Spain, who was engaged in the resale, receipt of this product. Already in the course of the investigation of the criminal case and conducting additional story enterprises, we additionally identified 5 defendants who were involved in the same thefts, and already within the framework of the investigation of the case, we sent an international request for evidence of assistance on the territory of the Kingdom of Spain.

In Minsk, each of the organizers found new assistants. Moreover, it was not the mastermind of the scheme who decided to work on a large scale, who was the first to work on it, but his friend. After the conflict, the young man returned to Minsk and began to throw money earned through shadow business around. This lifestyle attracted his friends, who began to wonder where the money came from. He began to make expensive purchases, constantly travel to different countries, and so on. And his classmates and fellow students saw that the man did not work anywhere, lived beautifully, constantly bars, restaurants, cafes, and so on, began to take an interest in the type of activity. And in order not to, let's say, engage myself, well, not myself, so as not to spend pain every day, I just involved these friends in my activity and was already receiving interest from them.

They all graduated from the same mathematical gymnasium, which is located on Kiseleva Street. And they were all graduates of the same gymnasium, respectively, this is one of the elite gymnasiums in the city of Minsk.

Leonid Melnik conducted a detention and search in the house of one of the main defendants, subsequently interrogated this suspect and his relatives.

Despite a good education, the individuals decided to engage in criminal activity. It should be noted that they all came from prosperous families. These were not families with problems with the criminal law. All from good families, but, nevertheless, a thirst for easy money. It turned out that they began to engage in this criminal activity.

As for the operation of the scheme itself. Details from compromised bank cards were purchased on the Darknet. Various goods were subsequently purchased from these accounts, which were then sold at a reduced cost through online services, thus laundering the stolen money. The range is wide, from sports equipment to branded clothing and paraphernalia, mainly premium class, but the products were sold at prices significantly below market prices, while the damage is estimated at hundreds of thousands. The victims are mainly citizens of the EU, USA and Great Britain.

It is this group that will later attract the attention of law enforcement agencies with their sloppy work, although the conspiracy measures were at their best. At that time, everything was fine with them, the business was going uphill and developing. To work more efficiently, the organizer even hired a person with knowledge of English. The fact is that, having worked on the errors, online stores began to request confirmation of orders by phone.

If earlier the payment was made, so to speak, simply by a person, no confirmation was required and so on, then already today, as I said, the online store began to take measures, so to speak, to protect itself in this regard, because if the goods were paid for and sent, and then during the check the bank established that this was a fraudulent operation according to their security rules, the store returned the money to the bank, so to speak, to the victim, from whom these funds were written off, and the goods, accordingly, were already sent, and in this situation the store lost. In order to protect themselves a little, they began to require a call from a person to confirm the goods, so that they would say what goods they ordered, what goods were sent where and the cost of these goods.

The choice fell on a girl who taught English at a school. It was she who began to confirm orders in foreign stores. In a message she received the order number, what was being bought, and the phone number to call for confirmation. For such services, the teacher received a salary even higher than at school.

This caused a certain surprise, because it does not happen often, in fact. But, nevertheless, the correspondence found on electronic media, both hers and that of other participants in the crime, gave the investigator a clear reason to understand that this is an accomplice to the crime. The woman motivated this by the fact that she did not have enough money for her criminal activity. But, nevertheless, this does not justify her in any way. I think that her students were very surprised.

Carding for goods is aimed at purchasing goods, gift certificates, subscriptions and services using other people's bank details. To do this, fraudsters only need the card number, date and three-digit code - CVC. For greater efficiency and specification of work by country, the owner's name, address and phone number may be required. Most often, card information is sold with all this data. The more information about the cardholder the carder has, the more opportunities to withdraw funds.

After our immediate subject, who made the payment, that is, the theft, entered all the information about the success of the payment into the table, which this caller also had access to, made a call for confirmation, i.e. misled the store representatives that the goods were allegedly paid for legally, which she also made a note in this table that a successful call was made, the store confirmed that it was convinced that the payment was made legally. And she made this note in this table.

An international group of carders laundered money through online trading platforms. The difficulty was that the criminals worked through the Darknet and specialized programs - the so-called anonymizers. That is, they tried to conceal their activities as much as possible. The accomplices detained in Belarus were mostly people with higher economic and financial education and skills in the field of information technology. The dealers tried to stay in the shadows all the time, changed their mobile numbers, closed messengers, and always kept their distance from new acquaintances, not letting them into their social circle for a long time.

I will say that there were such people who took conspiracy measures until the last moment, and some were actually already vigilant. And there were moments that ... Well, we already had enough information, let's say, to bring them to justice. But later, during the investigation, during the inspection of equipment, etc., it was clear that their vigilance had dulled a little and they began to make more mistakes, and some, up until the last moment, so to speak, were so pedantic in this regard that they calculated, checked, and so on, every step they took.

One of the first to relax was the defendant who lived in Spain. Apparently, the warm sun and living far from his accomplices dulled his vigilance. One of the first was the guy who began to order expensive things and jewelry almost in his own name. Although before that, they worked exclusively through front companies in the USA and so-called drops that did all the dirty work.

The concept of a scam drop and a non-scam drop. That is, there are people who do not understand the nature of the actions in which they participate in receiving goods. Accordingly, these are scam drops, and non-scam drops are those people who understand that they are participating in theft and are actually accomplices to this theft.

During their activities, the criminals changed hundreds of drops. Most of these people have been identified, but no violations of the law were found in their actions. These are mainly US citizens who received the stolen goods and then sent them on to the specified address.

They conclude alleged employment contracts with foreigners. Allegedly, they represent some companies and act in the alleged interests of some company, for example, as a manager for receiving goods. And then, when the goods are sent, American or other foreign citizens receive the goods and then our double-minded people tell them that it is necessary to deliver this or that destination. As a rule, this will be some company that is engaged in the forwarding of goods.

When the defendant, who lived in Spain, came to the attention of law enforcement officers, he had already settled in a nice house, elite things and luxury cars. They will later be seized during searches. As already mentioned, it was this person who remained the link between the two groups operating in Belarus. He, like no one else, understood the specifics of the work and, unlike others who provided similar services, did not cheat his own.

I will tell you a story, they tried, when a conflict occurred between them, they tried to sell the goods through another user, unknown to them, and refused, because there were also facts that he deceived, underpaid, somewhere the goods arrived to him, and this unidentified user of ours said that the goods did not actually arrive, then sold these goods, and they had to, let's say, return to their friend with other participants, unknown to each other, as they found on the Internet, there were facts that they were simply deceived, let's say, and what they did, worked on, they did not receive anything from it. They communicated with each other, they told each other some things to make it easier to commit, they suggested some things to each other for stealing this, but they committed the theft separately from each other, let's say, the distribution of money among them is also the same, that among themselves separately, it's just that they were connected by this very distributor of ours, who, the goods, who lived in Spain.

What about the second group? Its organizer, who was also the original mastermind of the entire scheme, took only one person as an accomplice. They worked according to an absolutely identical scheme as their competitors. Moreover, despite the conflict in Thailand, they still maintained communication with their former partners. Mainly, for more efficient work.

This person, unlike his partners, did not waste his time on trifles. Among the confiscated items were two luxury cars, one of them a Maserati, as well as numerous parcels with elite sports equipment, branded watches and clothes. To assess the scale of the theft, it is enough to say that just a bag of golf clubs, paid for with a compromised bank card, costs more than 10 thousand dollars.

Closer to the arrest, the Belarusian members of the criminal group also began to place orders for themselves. These were mainly branded items and jewelry. However, in this case, the delivery logistics became even more confusing. Since the late 90s, it has become impossible to order goods directly from an online store in the USA to Belarus. This is due to the fact that back in the early 2000s, the first clothing carders were from our country. That's when the ban was imposed. And then, goods are sent to the territory of Ukraine, or the Baltic countries, or, again, these can be Western European countries, where people who are other drops, controlled by criminals, they transport these goods or directly sell them in the territory of European countries at a lower cost, 50-60% of the real cost of the goods.

Later, investigators will even be able to debug the path of many parcels that arrived in Belarus from the USA. So modern technologies both help cybercriminals and play cruel jokes on them. After all, all tracks and digital traces are preserved, even after their diligent cleaning.

They lost their vigilance a little, began to order expensive things for themselves. The "Gargush" store, where any item really costs a lot of money, started ordering expensive metals for themselves, that is, let's say, but then sent them again to our Spaniard. The Spaniard had already sent them to Russia, somewhere to some front man. Here again they found a front man. People initially did not know right away, yes, in fact, that they were receiving some kind of criminal, received, acquired goods. And they went to Russia, let's say, picked up this goods, and they already distributed these things between them, sneakers, T-shirts, jackets, that is, well, all that. Gold items, bracelets, chains, gold rings were confiscated from one of these organizers of this large group.

Ordering expensive items and jewelry for themselves, the accomplices decided to raise the stakes and play big. Now, instead of cheap orders, they began to steal more expensive goods. Naturally, such activity led to the fact that law enforcement agencies in many countries became interested in the criminal group.

The entire infrastructure for delivering goods from the United States to Spain or Belarus is expensive and can lead to the disclosure of the criminal activity itself at any time, so the goal of minimization was to minimize these possible costs, given that these were experienced criminals who had been operating for more than one year. Accordingly, measures were taken to minimize these possible costs.

The Belarusians worked with Internet platforms from dozens of countries, in addition to national trading resources. The calculation was that law enforcement agencies in different countries do not interact at such a level as to identify and prove the guilt of those who, for example, steal bank card details at one end of the continent and pay at the other.

It should be noted that despite the fact that carding may have lost its position in the overall crime structure, it is nevertheless a crime that poses a great public danger because it is difficult to detect, that is, it has high latency, due to the same reasons indicated above. That is, this is necessary international cooperation.

That is, the victim will not come to the police or the Investigative Committee. And such crimes are often detected when an investigation is carried out on other carders, then their connections with, so to speak, colleagues in the shop are established, and in the future this is already a chain for further disclosure of this crime and its investigation.

But, as practice has shown, for law enforcement officers of different countries there are no borders in combating international crime. After Belarusian operatives began developing a cross-border criminal group, their foreign colleagues also joined the investigation. Police officers from Spain were among the first to provide assistance.

"Online conferences and meetings were held together with law enforcement officers from Spain with the aim of successfully detaining these defendants both in our territory of the Republic of Belarus and in their territory of the Kingdom of Spain.

Law enforcement officers from other countries also provided assistance in the investigation. The operatives were supported by US police officers, who helped with collecting evidence and grounds for detaining the criminals, and the payment systems through which the goods were paid provided all the necessary information. By the way, the very first cards to which the accomplices received transfers from Spain were issued at the beginning of their criminal activity in Thailand.

Such cases are truly unique because they require a large array of data processing and extensive international cooperation, because without it it is virtually impossible to send a criminal case to court. And in this case, accordingly, the criminal prosecution authorities received information through payment systems such as visa and master cards that accurately allowed the criminal prosecution to conclude that thefts had been committed from specific online stores and individuals.

By this time, law enforcement officers already had all the information they needed to begin detaining the suspects. But it was important to coordinate all the details in order to strike simultaneously in both Belarus and Spain. This was necessary so that, upon learning of the detention of their accomplices, other defendants would not have time to delete their digital traces. Watch our next episode of the Secrets of the Investigation project to learn about the unique special operation to detain the clothing carders.

Watch the next episode. Details of the special operation to detain a cross-border criminal group. The role and characteristics of one of the defendants who has looped the Belarusian vector around himself.

What was memorable is that this person was involved in football, even quite professionally.

The intricacies of investigating a criminal case. And even such a rule used to exist, in principle, among cybercriminals - do not steal where you live. But this rule began to be actively violated.

Illegal earnings of the attackers and the overall damage. One and a half million dollars, that's what was confirmed to us. And how did the story about carding clothes end for the accused?

In the previous series. Stuff carding. A crash course from experts.

The concept of stuff carding has been known since the 90s. In the Republic of Belarus, the first cases of stuff carding appeared around 2003.

Stuff carding is the resale of goods at a reduced price. Such products are usually bought remotely in other countries by criminals using discredited bank cards without the owners' knowledge.

The beginning of the story of stuff carding involving Belarusians. They immediately distributed the functions among themselves. One of them knew English very well.

The intricacies of investigating a criminal case.

And even such a rule used to exist, in principle. Cybercriminals are not robbed where you live. But this rule began to be actively violated.

Who became the link between the two criminal groups? They all graduated from the same mathematics school. And where did the members of the criminal group stumble? They lost their vigilance a little and started ordering expensive things.

The beginning of a joint special operation by law enforcement agencies of Belarus and Spain.

This is one of those rare cases when the official bodies reported the results of a special operation on the same day. Two days later, they told some details, and this is provided that the development of some of the participants in the scheme was still ongoing, and, according to operatives, there were many of them in Belarus.

Another interesting moment, just after the arrest of these defendants.

Alexey Volchok investigated the criminal case from the very beginning, ensured the planning of the investigation and the implementation of the most important investigative actions. He was engaged in the development of the resolution on bringing them as defendants. He prepared all the most important documents related to the criminal case.

"There was another defendant whom we knew, but he had two children to testify, one minor literally, born two months, and in order, let's say, not to carry out such measures to detain him, with a search of his apartment, there was, although there were interviews, information that other persons involved in the criminal activities of these groups were identified. And they hinted, let's say, that they should come and voluntarily report their involvement in this group. But they waited a month, and the citizen did not come. On the contrary, he went and, let's say, threw the equipment that he used for criminal purposes into the river. But when they detained him, they said, did you see the news? He says, he saw it. He says, well, they warned him, what? He says, they warned him. He says, why didn't he come voluntarily and tell? He told him everything. Indeed, they watched him go to a body of water that day, throw away his laptop, but after his detention he confessed completely, told everything, and continued to give confessions until the end of the investigation.

January 18. The Cybercrime Department of the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard of Spain, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, launched an operation against an organized criminal group that specialized in carding. As a result of the operation, a search was conducted in the city of Marbella, numerous digital and material evidence was seized. Two high-end cars were also seized and a member of the resident criminal group of this city was questioned.

On January 18, the Cybercrime Department of the Spanish Police, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus, launched an operation against an organized criminal group that specialized in carding. As a result of this operation, a search was conducted in the city of Marbella, numerous digital and material evidence was seized, two high-end cars were also seized and a member of the resident criminal group of this city was questioned.

The composition of the combined team of law enforcement officers should not be surprising. After all, the so-called "fraudulent" actions were carried out all over the world, including in the UK and America. Even now, no expert will undertake to say how many victims there were. But the damage caused by the criminal group's activities has been established, which reveals the true scale of its work. During the detention of the defendants, it was important for law enforcement officers of the two countries to coordinate their actions in order to strike simultaneously in both Belarus and Spain. This is necessary so that, having learned about the detention of their accomplices, other defendants would not have time to delete their digital traces. That is why it was necessary to work clearly and quickly.

In order to enter the private home where the suspect lived, a certain tactical combination was developed that helped us penetrate and, accordingly, contributed to the fact that the digital evidence stored on the suspect's electronic media remained safe. After we felt that we had gained access to the home, a search was launched, strictly in accordance with the decree.

During the search, something else illegal was found in the house of this defendant. The day before, he took a stash of drugs. As the detainee will later say, exclusively for himself. But one way or another, this only added to his problems with the law. This person was one of the main figures of this criminal group and he was directly involved in thefts, using the details of bank payment cards.

Leonid Melnik conducted the detention and search of the house of one of the main defendants. Subsequently, he interrogated this suspect and his relatives.

During the search, password-protected equipment was discovered. This subsequently caused certain difficulties when examining computer information, but certain evidence of his guilt was found, as a file was found in the cloud storage that contained all of his criminal episodes directly under the date at the time of the theft amount. And this subsequently correlated with other evidence that was found during the investigation and during searches of other accomplices.

This defendant was one of the first to join the criminal group after its organizer returned from Thailand. He was a friend in the yard. He also graduated from a mathematical gymnasium and had a higher technical education. Therefore, he did not need a long explanation of how the scheme works in practice. He grasped it, as they say, on the fly.

What was remembered was that this man was involved in football, even quite professionally. That is, he was an athlete in good standing, makes a positive impression in communication, that is, a person who respects his parents, but nevertheless, due to the fact that easy money appeared. He led a rather parasitic lifestyle. Never really worked anywhere. Look, I used drugs.

You have been involved in carding for 10 years. Your activity was recorded for one year. Everything is recorded in photos and videos. There are responses from international payment systems. Purchases and control over you were made from your carding goods, which you sold.

Law enforcement officers conducted 12 searches in Minsk. At the place of residence of accomplices, operatives found over 120 thousand dollars, drugs, two unregistered smoothbore guns, bladed weapons, various storage media and means of communication. The organizer and his lower-level accomplices were detained in Belarus. Nevertheless, their role in the illegal scheme is high, law enforcement officers say. In total, six men and one woman, the same English teacher, were detained during the special operation. Characteristically, the members of the criminal group tried not to stand out in everyday life. They spent their free time in bars, sometimes went to firing ranges, and were fond of clay pigeon shooting. They demonstrated good wealth exclusively on vacation abroad.

We also identified these cards, so to speak, then by sending a request to banking institutions for our finances, it was established that only on these cards, which we also confiscated from them and which they used, a cash cut of more than 500 thousand US dollars was withdrawn on one card and 200 thousand dollars on the second card.

Later, in the wake of this group, their competitors were detained - those same two people who, after returning from Thailand, began to work separately. At first, investigators even combined these two proceedings into one. But soon it became clear - these are completely different criminal cases, although with a similar denominator.

A separate criminal case was also opened against another defendant. As it turned out, he also worked separately and was not part of any of the groups. His scheme was identical, but it was mainly tied not to the purchase of things, but to bonus cards. As a rule, bonus cards were sold for half price and sold for bitcoins. Carders like to buy gift certificates and sell them on forums to ordinary people or special buyers. The option is not as profitable as described above, but simple. They buy, in principle, everything that can be bought with stolen data. Subscriptions to paid resources that ban the account when the card owner notices the loss of funds.

He bought the card details on this, he said himself. That is, well, there are many. There are many. So he found it somewhere himself, apparently, and started trying. He came up with such a theme that it is not specifically ordering things, because, well, it is difficult. You see for yourself, the chain, right? Shop, drop, sale, implementation, then withdrawal, receipt and so on. A complex scheme, he went more simply, just registered in the online store, bought discount bonus cards and then resold them himself.

The arrest of the defendant who worked with bonus cards is an excellent example of how cases are investigated against cybercriminals. First, law enforcement officers go to one of the defendants, and then, having learned some details from his computer, follow the threads to accomplices or colleagues in the shop.

And even such a rule used to exist, in principle, among cybercriminals "do not steal where you live." But this rule began to be actively violated, so to speak, unspoken, because due to the development of information technology, a large number of people have skills in working with a computer, computer systems and know how to use them for criminal purposes.

Recently, a new direction has appeared - payment for flights and hotel reservations. They are also sold on forums to ordinary people. The process of canceling a fraudulent transfer takes time. You can have time to live in an expensive hotel at someone else's expense. Fraudsters know which cards to use to prolong the process of withdrawing funds as much as possible.

Accordingly, given that carding for goods involves a more complex structure of the mechanism, or rather, the commission of a crime, many do not want to bother and, in simple terms, roughly speaking, try to steal directly from the citizens who live here. That is, you don't need, I don't know, any English, just an Internet platform, accounts and that's it.

Like any fraudulent way of making money, there is a risk that the fraudster will be caught sooner or later. But, unfortunately, with the development of means of protection against fraudulent transfers and ways to identify carders for criminal liability, new methods of protection and disguise are being created in contrast.

Such resources are constantly working, let's say, if one large one closed, then its competitor will become just as large. Simply all the users who, let's say, were on this resource, they will go to another similar resource. Until, let's say, law enforcement agencies stop this activity, it is clear that people themselves simply do not stop. Here is an example from this, when they worked here, then they seemed to disperse, it became more difficult somewhere, they began to look for new loopholes, there is no person who sells the goods, they began to order something for themselves and so on. That is, they are constantly looking for new schemes for the withdrawal of this product, let's say, the implementation of its purchase and so on.

Self-interest generates ideas, and ideas generate new schemes for shadow earnings. Carding is not dead. Billions of dollars are laundered in this way every year. But sooner or later, technical progress will displace this type of illegal earnings. Carding will become too risky, and the profit is questionable. Fraudsters will have no choice but to look for new ways to steal money.

This is not carding of goods, these are various thefts via the Internet, in particular, using various malicious computer programs, as well as recently, which have received, well, cryptocurrencies, let's say, yes, we have very often, just many do not declare about, But such facts exist. Other crimes that have become widespread are vishing and phishing. These are the crimes that are the most widespread in the structure of cybercrime in the Republic of Belarus. Article 211 is theft by modifying computer information, which establishes punishment for committing theft, for example, by phishing. It makes up to 85 percent of the total number of cybercrimes. Accordingly, those persons whose activities we investigated, they were, so to speak, dinosaurs of the criminal front, because such crimes, firstly, were isolated and so were, because the complexity of their investigation lies in the fact that the criminal prosecution body must establish the fact of theft, but the theft itself occurs from the territory of Belarus, but the victims or victims of the crime are not in Belarus, they are, for example, if an online store, then this is a legal entity that is located in the United States. If goods are stolen from individuals through a clothing card, these are also foreign citizens. Consequently, there is a question of international legal cooperation, which is a complex procedure, lengthy, and we cannot always get an answer from foreign states competent in this part.

Law enforcement officers do not stand still and constantly improve their competence in investigating such crimes. But criminals also come up with new moves and methods of deception. This is a confrontation between two forces. But, as the example of this criminal case has shown, it is quite possible to fight the problem of carding of things, despite the difficulties of logistics and cooperation with law enforcement agencies of other states.

To summarize, we can say the following that carding of things, as a crime, was and will be due to the fact that new ways of communication between people have appeared, other ways of sending money, other ways of converting or storing money in something. Its role, of course, has fallen in the overall structure of crime. Criminals who live in the territory of the Republic of Belarus, they turned to us, those who previously engaged in carding outside Belarus, they began to engage in similar crimes in their subject already on the territory of the Republic of Belarus against Belarusian citizens.

Experts say that if the stolen card has already been hacked and the criminals have managed to use it, then there is only one way out - blocking the bank account. To protect your accounts, experts advise to get a separate card, which will be intended only for paying for goods when buying online. You should not keep funds on it, and you need to credit funds immediately before paying for the necessary goods.

It has become more difficult to work in this particular topic, because the stores themselves, realizing that the money will have to be returned to the bank in the event of a fraudulent payment, they began to more or less protect themselves by not sending the goods immediately. That is, they just waited a few days. The bank calls that the payment was made using incorrect details. And the victim or the bank themselves determined that this was a fraudulent transaction, they informed the store about it and, accordingly, the store simply did not send the goods. And the money was returned from the store back to the victim's card.

The age of those detained in this criminal case is from 30 to 36 years. Basically, these are people with higher economic, financial education, knowledge in the field of information technology. All of them were charged with theft of property by modifying computer information. This involves knowingly entering false information into computer systems, banks, or online stores in order to illegally seize property and steal money from bank accounts.

All of the defendants in this criminal case have already heard their sentences. The first group, which included 5 people, was sentenced to terms of 6 to 9 years in prison. Themis also delivered its verdict to their colleagues. The defendants were sentenced to 6 years in prison, but this sentence has not yet entered into legal force. As for one of the main defendants, he remains under the supervision of Spanish law enforcement.

Subsequently, we sent another request to extradite this citizen to us for the purpose of bringing him to the territory of the Republic of Belarus. The request is currently under consideration. We have not yet received a response to it. According to their legislation, given that he is only a suspect, they do not have the right to extradite him immediately. He was under their control all the time, was in Spain. And when we sent a request with a resolution to bring him as an accused and extradite him, we have not yet received a response. According to, again, their information, any, not only at our request, they will extradite him to us, any country that requests him for bringing him to any responsibility, at the discretion, so to speak, of them, he will be extradited to that state. It is not a fact that he will even, so to speak, end up with us.

But Belarusian investigators continue to seek the extradition of one of the main participants in this criminal group for legal prosecution in his homeland.