New Jersey, US Attorney Paul Fishman said the hackers penetrated some of financial institutions computer networks, diverted customer funds to bank accounts and pre-paid debit cards and employed individuals known as "cashers" to withdraw the stolen funds.
The targeted companies include Aon Hewitt, Automated Data Processing, Citibank, E-Trade, Electronic Payments, Fundtech, iPayment, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Nordstrom Bank, PayPal, TD Ameritrade, US Department of Defense, Defense Finance and Accounting Service; TIAA-CREF, USAA, and Veracity Payment Solutions.
The eight accused charged are Oleksiy Sharapka, Leonid Yanovitsky, Oleg Pidtergerya, Robert Dubuc, Andrey Yarmolitskiy, Richard Gundersen, Lamar Taylor and Ilya Ostapyuk.
US Attorney Fishman said that the gang used stolen identities to "cash out" hacked accounts in a series of internationally coordinated modern-day bank robberies.
"We will continue to pursue our investigation into this scheme and our fight against the rising threat of criminals for whom computers are the weapon of choice," Fishman added.
As part of the scheme, the defendants stole identities from individuals in the US and used the same to execute cash out operation, including by transferring money to cards in the names of those stolen identities.
If the court convicts, each accused will face a maximum 20 years sentence for conspiracy to commit wire fraud count, 20 years for committing money laundering and 15 years for committing identity theft count.
