A grand jury in the southeastern state of Atlanta indicted eight people Tuesday in a credit card fraud ring that stole nine million dollars in 280 cities around the world, the Justice Department said.
Five of the indicted are Estonians. One of them, the suspected mastermind of the scheme, is in prison in Estonia awaiting extradition to the United States, the department said.
One is Russian and another is Moldovan; the nationality of the eighth has not been disclosed.
The indictment says that the suspects, aged from 20-33, are suspected of hacking the codes of debit cards used by some employers to pay employees' salaries.
They then handed out 44 cards to accomplices who in 12 hours withdrew more than nine million dollars from 2,100 ATMs in 280 cities in the United States, Japan, Canada, Ukraine and Hong Kong.
"Cashers" carrying out the illegal withdrawals were allowed to keep 30-50 percent of their take and sent the rest to the scam's organizers, the indictment says.
The indictment alleges that the group used sophisticated hacking techniques to compromise the data encryption that was used by RBS WorldPay, which is based in Atlanta, to protect customer data on payroll debit cards.
Four of the organizers face more than 30 years in prison each.
"This investigation has broken the back of one of the most sophisticated computer hacking rings in the world," said Acting US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates of Georgia.
