Man accused over America’s biggest credit card identity fraud

A Florida man has been accused of stealing information about 130 million credit and debt cards from customers of 7-Eleven and other retail giants in the biggest identify theft case ever uncovered in America.

Prosecutors from the Department of Justice said that Albert Gonzales, a 28-year-old from Miami, Florida, hacked into the computer systems of companies including Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processing business, Hannaford Brothers, the supermarket group, and 7-Eleven, the convenience chain, to steal information from customers’ bank cards.

If convicted, Mr Gonzales, who identified himself online as Soupnazi, will have broken his own record for alleged computer crime.

He is currently in a New Jersey jail awaiting trial for similar offences last year involving the theft of information about 40 million cards from computers of stores including TJ Maxx, Barnes & Noble, Forever 21 and Sports Authority.

At the time, this was thought to be the largest-ever case of identity theft. Mr Gonzales pleaded not guilty to the earlier charges and will face trial on those next year.

According to prosecutors in today’s case, between October 2006 and May 2008 Mr Gonzales sent data stolen from Heartland, 7-Eleven and others to computer servers in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine as part of a conspiracy that involved two hackers from Russia.

The Russians were not identified by the Department of Justice, which refered to them as Hacker 1 and Hacker 2.

“Upon stealing the credit and debit card data, Gonzales and the co-conspirators would seek to sell the data to others who would use it to make fraudulent purchases, make unauthorised withdrawals from banks and further identity theft schemes,” prosecutors said.

All three were charged with conspiracy to gain unauthorised access to computers, to commit fraud in connection with computers and to damage computers and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They face up to 35 years in prison and more than $1million in fines.