Twenty-seven year old Qendrim Dobruna has pleaded guilty to bank fraud charges in a case stemming back to 2011 where a team of hackers targeted and stole $14 million from ATMs in two days.
In 2011, the defendant and his co-conspirators hacked into the systems of a U.S.-based credit and debit card payment processor that processed transactions for the American Red Cross. Those transactions were on behalf of disaster relief victims, federal prosecutors say, reports Law360.
Affected card companies include Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., Discover and American Express Co. –all of which saw information go missing.
“The defendant and his associates hacked into the global financial system and helped themselves to funds using prepaid debit cards meant for the needy and vulnerable,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement, reports the source. “We will continue to work with our private-sector partners to solve these 21st century heists.”
Dobruna, operating under the aliases “cl0sEd” and “cL0z,” participated in the cyberattack from overseas, obtained account information from co-conspirators and sold that data to other co-conspirators over the Internet. He was arrested and extradited from his home in Germany.
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