United States - International Identity Theft

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal court has stopped, pending trial, an elaborate international scheme that used stolen identities to place more than $10 million in bogus charges on people's credit and debit cards. More than a million cardholders were hit with one-time charges of $10 or less; their payments were routed through dummy corporations in the United States to bank accounts in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. According to the FTC, the defendants - API Trade LLC and 15 other sham companies - open more than 100 merchant accounts with companies that process charges to cardholders' credit and debit card accounts.

Read the press release.