Three nabbed for America's biggest case of identity theft

Washington, Aug 18(ANI): In the biggest case of identity theft in American history, US prosecutors have charged a man with stealing data relating to 130 million credit and debit cards.

Prosecutors say 28-year-old Albert Gonzales and two unnamed Russian co-conspirators hacked into the payment systems of numerous companies, including Heartland Payment Systems, Hannaford Brothers and the 7-Eleven chain.

According to the reports, the group researched the credit and debit card systems used by their victims, attacked their networks and sent the data to computer servers they operated in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

Prosecutors also claimed that they aimed to sell the data, enabling others to make fraudulent purchases.

If convicted in the case, Gonzales would face up to 20 years in jail for wire fraud and five years for conspiracy. He would also have to pay a fine of 250,000 dollars for each of the two charges. Gonzales used a complicated technique known as an SQL injection attack to penetrate networks' firewalls and steal information," The BBC reported the US Department, as saying. (ANI)