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Oleksiy Sharapka, 33, directed the operation with help from 39-year-old Leonid Yanovitsky, both of Kiev, said Fishman (above).
A third man, Richard Gundersen, 47, of Brooklyn, helped divert money from the hacked accounts to bank accounts and pre-paid debit cards that the crew controlled, he said.
The crew collected the money through a sophisticated “cash out” operation that employed people known as “cashers” to withdraw the stolen funds, among other ways, by making ATM withdrawals and fraudulent purchases in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Georgia and elsewhere, the U.S. Attorney said.
They also stole identities of real customers and transferred money into cards with their names, he said.
Some of those identities were used to seek tax refunds from the IRS, Fishman added.
Conspiring hackers gained unauthorized access to the bank accounts of customers of more than a dozen global financial institutions and businesses, including: Aon Hewitt; Automatic Data Processing Inc.; Citibank N.A.; E-Trade; Electronic Payments Inc.; Fundtech Holdings LLC, iPayment Inc.; JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A.; Nordstrom Bank; PayPal; TD Ameritrade; the U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Finance and Accounting Service; TIAA-CREF; USAA; and Veracity Payment Solutions Inc.
A federal grand jury indicted all three on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit access device fraud and identity theft, and aggravated identity theft.
Gunderson remains in federal custody while the government searches for Sharapka and Yanovitsky.
Fishman credited the U.S. Secret Service; U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations; Department of Defense, Criminal Investigative Service; and IRS-Criminal Investigation.
Handling the case out of Fishman’s office is Assistant U.S. Attorney Gurbir S. Grewal, chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Economic Crimes Unit.
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