Eleven arrests were made globally in a case involving cooperation from the Vietnamese High-Tech Crime Unit (HTCU), the Criminal Investigative Division of the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam (MPSVN CID), SOCA, the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), and the FBI. Eight criminals were arrested in Vietnam and three additional arrests were made in the UK.
All of the persons arrested were associated with the "mattfeuter" family of websites (mattfeuter.ru, mattfeuter.cc, mattfeuter.su, mattfeuter.com, etc) where approximately 16,000 members bought and sold stolen credit card data in bulk. It is believed that purchases from the websites had facilitated more than $200M worth of credit card fraud worldwide through the sale of more than 1.1 million credit cards.
SOCA (UK's Serious Organised Crime Unit), are joining forces to create the new National Crime Agency later this year, but are already performing joint operations such as this investigation in anticipation of the UK's new National Cyber Crime Unit. Andy Archibald, who is the interim Deputy Director of the National Cyber Crime Unit, where the "Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit" is housed, had this to say:
One of the world's major facilitation networks for online card fraud has been dismantled by this operation, and those engaged in this type of crime should know that they are neither anonymous, nor beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies. We and our partners in the UK and abroad, continue to protect the public and legitimate businesses by targeting websites trading in stolen card data, and relentlessly pursuing those who operate and frequent them."
Operations of this nature would not be possible without the support of private sector partners, in this case primarily Visa and MasterCard. In keeping with UK law, the names of the three persons arrested there were not given, only their locations:
- 37 year old man from West Ham
- 34 year old man from Thornton Heath
- 44 year old man from Manor Park
In the US, the New Jersey US Attorney's office has filed charges on 23 year old Duy Hai Truong of Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam.
Vietnamese Media has identified those arrested in Vietnam, and have named as their ringleader Van Tien Tu. The full list of those arrested include:
- Ngo Thi Quynh Anh
- Tran Thi Dieu Hien
- Van Tien Tu
- Truong Hai Duy
- Le Van Kieu, those five all from Ho Chi Min City
- Trinh Khac Duong
- Dao Ba Bang
- Doan Van Chuc, those three are from Hanoi
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| Allege Credit Card specialist Duy Hai Truong |
The HCM City five are charged with illegally posting and using information from the internet while the Hanoi three are charged with using credit card data for online gambling. The ringleader, Van Tien Tu is charged with having created the Mattfeuter websites, where credit cards are sold for between $2 and $20 per card. As the operator of the site, Van Tien Tu and his group earned $1.5 million in commissions on their sales.
Although we haven't yet heard of many cases with Vietnamese Cyber crime yet, the improvements in Vietnamese law passed in 2009 made it a criminal offense to fraudulently obtain card data from overseas target, as well as from victims in Vietnam.
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