Four Russian nationals and a Ukrainian have been charged with running a y-year sophisticated hacking organization that got into more than a dozen major American and international corporations, all the while stealing and selling at least 160 million credit and debit card numbers resulting n losses of hundreds of millions of dollars, the Associated Press reported.
Attorney Paul Fishman called the case the largest hacking and data breach scheme ever prosecuted in the United States.
The alleged scheme, which ran from 2005 until 2012 involved the penetration of accounts with various businesses including Nasdaq, 7-Eleven Inc, JC Penny, JetBlue and foreign companies like the French retailer Carrefour S.A. and Dexia Bank Belgium, news reports said.
The indictment said that the suspects in the scheme sent each other instant messages as they took control of the corporate data, telling each other, for instance, "NASDAQ is owned."
The five suspects include Vladimir Drinkman, Aleksander Kalinin, Roman Kotov and Dmitriy Smilianets, and Mikhail Rytikov, the AP reported. One suspect is reportedly in the Netherlands, and another due to appear in U.S. District Court in New Jersey next week.
The other three men's whereabouts were not made clear as of Thursday.
The prosecution builds on the case involving hacker Albert Gonzalez who in 2010 was forced to serve a 20-year prison sentence. Going by the scree name 'soupnazi,' Gonzalez was charged with hacking.
Prosecutors then identified Kainin and Drinkman as "sophisticated" hackers who specialized in penetrating the computer networks of multinational corporation, payment processor and financial institutions, the AP also reported.
All five suspects have been charged with taking part in the computer hacking conspiracy and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the AP also reported.
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